THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 

GIFT 

From  The  library  of 

Henry  Goldman,    Ph.D. 

1886-1972 


THE  TERROR 

A  MYSTERY 


BY 

ARTHUR  MACHEN 

AUTHOR  OF  "THE  BOWMEN" 


NEW  YORK 
ROBERT  M.  McBRIDE  fcf  COMPANY 

UNION  SQUARE,  NORTH 


Copyright,    1917,   by 

ROBEBT    M.    McBBIDE    &    Co. 


Published  in  1917 


Annex 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I     T/J£  Coming  of  the  Terror   .      .  i 

II     Death  in  the  Village                   .  26 

III  77^  Doctor's  Theory      ...  32 

IV  T/£e  Spread  of  the  Terror    .      .  49 


V     77^  Incident  of  the  Unknown 

Tree      .......     64 

VI     Mr.  Remnant's  Z  Ray    ...     79 

VII     The  Case  of  the  Hidden  Ger- 

mans    .......     93 

VIII  IV  hat  Mr.  Merritt  Found  .  .107 

IX  The  Light  on  the  Water  .  .121 

X  The  Child  and  the  Moth  .  .136 

XI  At  Treff  Loyne  Farm     .  .  .149 

XII  The  Letter  of  Wrath    .  .  .  .163 

XIII  The  Last  Words  of  Mr.  Secretan  181 

XIV  The  End  of  the  Terror  .  .  .  196 


CHAPTER  I  The  Coming 

of  the  Terror 

AFTER  two  years  we  are  turning 
once  more  to  the  morning's  news 
with  a  sense  of  appetite  and  glad 
expectation.  There  were  thrills  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  war ;  the  thrill  of  horror  and 
of  a  doom  that  seemed  at  once  incredible  and 
certain;  this  was  when  Namur  fell  and  the 
German  host  swelled  like  a  flood  over  the 
French  fields,  and  drew  very  near  to  the 
walls  of  Paris.  Then  we  felt  the  thrill  of 
exultation  when  the  good  news  came  that 
the  awful  tide  had  been  turned  back,  that 
Paris  and  the  world  were  safe;  for  awhile 
at  all  events. 

Then  for  days  we  hoped  for  more  news 

as  good  as  this  or  better.     Has  Von  Kluck 

been  surrounded?     Not  to-day,  but  perhaps 

he  will  be  surrounded  to-morrow.     But  the 

[i] 


The  Terror 

days  became  weeks,  the  weeks  drew  out  to 
months;  the  battle  in  the  West  seemed 
frozen.  Now  and  again  things  were  done 
that  seemed  hopeful,  with  promise  of  events 
still  better.  But  Neuve  Chapelle  and  Loos 
dwindled  into  disappointments  as  their  tale 
was  told  fully;  the  lines  in  the  West  re- 
mained, for  all  practical  purposes  of  victory, 
immobile.  Nothing  seemed  to  happen, 
there  was  nothing  to  read  save  the  record 
of  operations  that  were  clearly  trifling  and 
insignificant.  People  speculated  as  to  the 
reason  of  this  inaction ;  the  hopeful  said  that 
Joffre  had  a  plan,  that  he  was  "nibbling," 
others  declared  that  we  were  short  of  muni- 
tions, others  again  that  the  new  levies  were 
not  yet  ripe  for  battle.  So  the  months  went 
by,  and  almost  two  years  of  war  had  been 
completed  before  the  motionless  English  line 
began  to  stir  and  quiver  as  if  it  awoke  from 
a  long  sleep,  and  began  to  roll  onward,  over- 
whelming the  enemy. 


[2] 


The  Terror 

The  secret  of  the  long  inaction  of  the 
British  Armies  has  been  well  kept.  On  the 
one  hand  it  was  rigorously  protected  by  the 
censorship,  which  severe,  and  sometimes 
severe  to  the  point  of  absurdity — "the  cap- 
tains and  the  .  .  .  depart,"  for  instance — 
became  in  this  particular  matter  ferocious. 
As  soon  as  the  real  significance  of  that 
which  was  happening,  or  beginning  to  hap- 
pen, was  perceived  by  the  authorities,  an 
underlined  circular  was  issued  to  the  news- 
paper proprietors  of  Great  Britain  and  Ire- 
land. It  warned  each  proprietor  that  he 
might  impart  the  contents  of  this  circular 
to  one  other  person  only,  such  person  being 
the  responsible  editor  of  his  paper,  who  was 
to  keep  the  communication  secret  under  the 
severest  penalties.  The  circular  forbade 
any  mention  of  certain  events  that  had 
taken  place,  that  might  take  place;  it  for- 
bade any  kind  of  allusion  to  these  events 
or  any  hint  of  their  existence,  or  of  the  pos- 
sibility of  their  existence,  not  only  in  the 
[3] 


The  Terror 

Press,  but  in  any  form  whatever.  The  sub- 
ject was  not  to  be  alluded  to  in  conversation, 
it  was  not  to  be  hinted  at,  however  obscurely, 
in  letters;  the  very  existence  of  the  circular, 
its  subject  apart,  was  to  be  a  dead  secret 

These  measures  were  successful.  A 
wealthy  newspaper  proprietor  of  the  North, 
warmed  a  little  at  the  end  of  the  Throwsters' 
Feast  (which  was  held  as  usual,  it  will  be 
remembered),  ventured  to  say  to  the  man 
next  to  him:  "How  awful  it  would  be, 
wouldn't  it,  if  .  .  ."  His  words  were  re- 
peated, as  proof,  one  regrets  to  say,  that  it 
was  time  for  "old  Arnold"  to  "pull  himself 
together";  and  he  was  fined  a  thousand 
pounds.  Then,  there  was  the  case  of  an 
obscure  weekly  paper  published  in  the 
county  town  of  an  agricultural  district  in 
Wales.  The  Meiros  Observer  (we  will  call 
it)  was  issued  from  a  stationer's  back  prem- 
ises, and  filled  its  four  pages  with  accounts 
of  local  flower  shows,  fancy  fairs  at  vic- 
arages, reports  of  parish  councils,  and  rare 
[4] 


The  Terror 

bathing  fatalities.  It  also  issued  a  visitors' 
list,  which  has  been  known  to  contain  six 
names. 

This  enlightened  organ  printed  a  para- 
graph, which  nobody  noticed,  which  was 
very  like  paragraphs  that  small  country 
newspapers  have  long  been  in  the  habit  of 
printing,  which  could  hardly  give  so  much 
as  a  hint  to  any  one — to  any  one,  that  is,  who 
was  not  fully  instructed  in  the  secret.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  this  piece  of  intelligence 
got  into  the  paper  because  the  proprietor, 
who  was  also  the  editor,  incautiously  left 
the  last  processes  of  this  particular  issue  to 
the  staff,  who  was  the  Lord-High- Every- 
thing-Else  of  the  establishment;  and  the 
staff  put  in  a  bit  of  gossip  he  had  heard  in 
the  market  to  fill  up  two  inches  on  the -back 
page.  But  the  result  was  that  the  Meiros 
Observer  ceased  to  appear,  owing  to  "unto- 
ward circumstances"  as  the  proprietor  said; 
and  he  would  say  no  more.  No  more,  that 
is,  by  way  of  explanation,  but  a  great  deal 
[51 


The  Terror 

more  by  way  of  execration  of   "damned, 
prying  busybodies." 

Now  a  censorship  that  is  sufficiently 
minute  and  utterly  remorseless  can  do  amaz- 
ing things  in  the  way  of  hiding  .  .  .  what 
it  wants  to  hide.  Before  the  war,  one  would 
have  thought  otherwise;  one  would  have 
said  that,  censor  or  no  censor,  the  fact  of 
the  murder  at  X  or  the  fact  of  the  bank  rob- 
bery at  Y  would  certainly  become  known; 
if  not  through  the  Press,  at  all  events 
through  rumor  and  the  passage  of  the  news 
from  mouth  to  mouth.  And  this  would  be 
true — of  England  three  hundred  years  ago, 
and  of  savage  tribelands  of  to-day.  But  we 
have  grown  of  late  to  such  a  reverence  for 
the  printed  word  and  such  a  reliance  on  it, 
that  the  old  faculty  of  disseminating  news 
by  word  of  mouth  has  become  atrophied. 
Forbid  the  Press  to  mention  the  fact  that 
Jones  has  been  murdered,  and  it  is  marvel- 
ous how  few  people  will  hear  of  it,  and  of 
[6] 


The  Terror 

those  who  hear  how  few  will  credit  the 
story  that  they  have  heard.  You  meet  a 
man  in  the  train  who  remarks  that  he  has 
been  told  something  about  a  murder  in  South- 
wark;  there  is  all  the  difference  in  the  world 
between  the  impression  you  receive  from 
such  a  chance  communication  and  that  given 
by  half  a  dozen  lines  of  print  with  name, 
and  street  and  date  and  all  the  facts  of  the 
case.  People  in  trains  repeat  all  sorts  of 
tales,  many  of  them  false ;  newspapers  do  not 
print  accounts  of  murders  that  have  not  been 
committed. 

Then  another  consideration  that  has  made 
for  secrecy.  I  may  have  seemed  to  say  that 
the  old  office  of  rumor  no  longer  exists;  I 
shall  be  reminded  of  the  strange  legend  of 
"the  Russians"  and  the  mythology  of  the 
"Angels  of  Mons."  But  let  me  point  out, 
in  the  first  place,  that  both  these  absurdities 
depended  on  the  papers  for  their  wide  dis- 
semination. If  there  had  been  no  news- 
papers or  magazines  Russians  and  Angels 
[71 


The  Terror 

would  have  made  but  a  brief,  vague  appear- 
ance of  the  most  shadowy  kind — a  few 
would  have  heard  of  them,  fewer  still  would 
have  believed  in  them,  they  would  have  been 
gossiped  about  for  a  bare  week  or  two,  and 
so  they  would  have  vanished  away. 

And,  then,  again,  the  very  fact  of  these 
vain  rumors  and  fantastic  tales  having 
been  so  widely  believed  for  a  time  was  fatal 
to  the  credit  of  any  stray  mutterings  that 
may  have  got  abroad.  People  had  been 
taken  in  twice;  they  had  seen  how  grave 
persons,  men  of  credit,  had  preached  and 
lectured  about  the  shining  forms  that  had 
saved  the  British  Army  at  Mons,  or  had 
testified  to  the  trains,  packed  with  gray- 
coated  Muscovites,  rushing  through  the 
land  at  dead  of  night:  and  now  there  was 
a  hint  of  something  more  amazing  than 
either  of  the  discredited  legends.  But  this 
time  there  was  no  word  of  confirmation  to 
be  found  in  daily  paper,  or  weekly  review, 
or  parish  magazine,  and  so  the  few  that 
[8] 


The  Terror 

heard  either  laughed,  or,  being  serious,  went 
home  and  jotted  down  notes  for  essays  on 
"War-time  Psychology:  Collective  Delu- 
sions." 

I  followed  neither  of  these  courses.  For 
before  the  secret  circular  had  been  issued 
my  curiosity  had  somehow  been  aroused  by 
certain  paragraphs  concerning  a  "Fatal  Ac- 
cident to  Well-known  Airman."  The  pro- 
peller of  the  airplane  had  been  shattered, 
apparently  by  a  collision  with  a  flight  of 
pigeons ;  the  blades  had  been  broken  and  the 
machine  had  fallen  like  lead  to  the  earth. 
And  soon  after  I  had  seen  this  account,  I 
heard  of  some  very  odd  circumstances  re- 
lating to  an  explosion  in  a  great  munition 
factory  in  the  Midlands.  I  thought  I  saw 
the  possibility  of  a  connection  between  two 
very  different  events. 

It  has  been  pointed  out  to  me  by  friends 
who  have  been  good  enough  to  read  this 
record,  that  certain  phrases  I  have  used  may 


The  Terror 

give  the  impression  that  I  ascribe  all  the 
delays  of  the  war  on  the  Western  front  to 
the  extraordinary  circumstances  which  oc- 
casioned the  issue  of  the  Secret  Circular. 
Of  course  this  is  not  the  case,  there  were 
many  reasons  for  the  immobility  of  our  lines 
from  October  1914  to  July  1916.  These 
causes  have  been  evident  enough  and  have 
been  openly  discussed  and  deplored.  But 
behind  them  was  something  of  infinitely 
greater  moment.  We  lacked  men,  but  men 
were  pouring  into  the  new  army;  we  were 
short  of  shells,  but  when  the  shortage  was 
proclaimed  the  nation  set  itself  to  mend 
this  matter  with  all  its  energy.  We  could 
undertake  to  supply  the  defects  of  our  army 
both  in  men  and  munitions — if  the  new  and 
incredible  danger  could  be  overcome.  It 
has  been  overcome;  rather,  perhaps,  it  has 
ceased  to  exist;  and  the  secret  may  now  be 
told. 

I  have  said  my  attention  was  attracted 
by  an  account  of  the  death  of  a  well-known 
[10] 


The  Terror 

airman.  I  have  not  the  habit  of  preserving 
cuttings,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  so  that  I  can- 
not be  precise  as  to  the  date  of  this  event. 
To  the  best  of  my  belief  it  was  either  to- 
wards the  end  of  May  or  the  beginning  of 
June  1915.  The  newspaper  paragraph  an- 
nouncing the  death  of  Flight-Lieutenant 
Western-Reynolds  was  brief  enough;  acci- 
dents, and  fatal  accidents,  to  the  men  who 
are  storming  the  air  for  us  are,  unfor- 
tunately, by  no  means  so  rare  as  to  demand 
an  elaborated  notice.  But  the  manner  in 
which  Western-Reynolds  met  his  death 
struck  me  as  extraordinary,  inasmuch  as  it 
revealed  a  new  danger  in  the  element  that 
we  have  lately  conquered.  He  was  brought 
down,  as  I  said,  by  a  flight  of  birds;  of 
pigeons,  as  appeared  by  what  was  found  on 
the  bloodstained  and  shattered  blades  of  the 
propeller.  An  eye-witness  of  the  accident, 
a  fellow-officer,  described  how  Western- 
Reynolds  set  out  from  the  aerodrome  on  a 
fine  afternoon,  there  being  hardly  any  wind. 
In] 


The  Terror 

He  was  going  to  France;  he  had  made  the 
journey  to  and  fro  half  a  dozen  times  or 
more,  and  felt  perfectly  secure  and  at  ease. 
"  'Wester'  rose  to  a  great  height  at  once, 
and  we  could  scarcely  see  the  machine.  I 
was  turning  to  go  when  one  of  the  fellows 
called  out,  'I  say!  What's  this?'  He 
pointed  up,  and  we  saw  what  looked  like  a 
black  cloud  coming  from  the  south  at  a  tre- 
mendous rate.  I  saw  at  once  it  wasn't  a 
cloud;  it  came  with  a  swirl  and  a  rush  quite 
different  from  any  cloud  I've  ever  seen. 
But  for  a  second  I  couldn't  make  out  exactly 
what  it  was.  It  altered  its  shape  and  turned 
into  a  great  crescent,  and  wheeled  and 
veered  about  as  if  it  was  looking  for  some- 
thing. The  man  who  had  called  out  had 
got  his  glasses,  and  was  staring  for  all  he 
was  worth.  Then  he  shouted  that  it  was  a 
tremendous  flight  of  birds,  'thousands  of 
them/  They  went  on  wheeling  and  beating 
about  high  up  in  the  air,  and  we  were  watch- 
ing them,  thinking  it  was  interesting,  but  not 

[12] 


The  Terror 

supposing  that  they  would  make  any  differ- 
ence to  'Wester,'  who  was  just  about  out  of 
sight.  His  machine  was  just  a  speck. 
Then  the  two  arms  of  the  crescent  drew  in 
as  quick  as  lightning,  and  these  thousands 
of  birds  shot  in  a  solid  mass  right  up  there 
across  the  sky,  and  flew  away  somewhere 
about  nor'-nor'-by-west.  Then  Henley,  the 
man  with  the  glasses,  called  out,  'He's 
down !'  and  started  running,  and  I  went  after 
him.  We  got  a  car  and  as  we  were  going 
along  Henley  told  me  that  he'd  seen  the 
machine  drop  dead,  as  if  it  came  out  of  that 
cloud  of  birds.  He  thought  then  that  they 
must  have  mucked  up  the  propeller  somehow. 
That  turned  out  to  be  the  case.  We  found 
the  propeller  blades  all  broken  and  covered 
with  blood  and  pigeon  feathers,  and  car- 
casses of  the  birds  had  got  wedged  in  be- 
tween the  blades,  and  were  sticking  to  them." 
This  was  the  story  that  the  young  air- 
man told  one  evening  in  a  small  company. 
He  did  not  speak  "in  confidence,"  so  I  have 
[13] 


The  Terror 

no  hesitation  in  reproducing  what  he  said. 
Naturally,  I  did  not  take  a  verbatim  note 
of  his  conversation,  but  I  have  something 
of  a  knack  of  remembering  talk  that  in- 
terests me,  and  I  think  my  reproduction  is 
very  near  to  the  tale  that  I  heard.  And  let 
it  be  noted  that  the  flying  man  told  his  story 
without  any  sense  or  indication  of  a  sense 
that  the  incredible,  or  all  but  the  incredible, 
had  happened.  So  far  as  he  knew,  he  said, 
it  was  the  first  accident  of  the  kind.  Air- 
men in  France  had  been  bothered  once  or 
twice  by  birds — he  thought  they  were  eagles 
— flying  viciously  at  them,  but  poor  old 
"Wester"  had  been  the  first  man  to  come 
up  against  a  flight  of  some  thousands  of 
pigeons. 

"And  perhaps  I  shall  be  the  next,"  he 
added,  "but  why  look  for  trouble?  Any- 
how, I'm  going  to  see  Toodle-oo  to-morrow 
afternoon." 


The  Terror 

the  varied  marvels  and  terrors  of  the  air ;  as 
one  heard  some  years  ago  of  "air  pockets," 
strange  gulfs  or  voids  in  the  atmosphere 
into  which  airmen  fell  with  great  peril;  or 
as  one  heard  of  the  experience  of  the  airman 
who  flew  over  the  Cumberland  mountains 
in  the  burning  summer  of  1911,  and  as  he 
swam  far  above  the  heights  was  suddenly 
and  vehemently  blown  upwards,  the  hot 
air  from  the  rocks  striking  his  plane  as  if 
it  had  been  a  blast  from  a  furnace  chimney. 
We  have  just  begun  to  navigate  a  strange 
region ;  we  must  expect  to  encounter  strange 
adventures,  strange  perils.  And  here  a  new 
chapter  in  the  chronicles  of  these  perils  and 
adventures  had  been  opened  by  the  death  of 
Western-Reynolds;  and  no  doubt  invention 
and  contrivance  would  presently  hit  on  some 
way  of  countering  the  new  danger. 

It  was,  I  think,  about  a  week  or  ten  days 

after  the  airman's  death  that  my  business 

called  me  to  a  northern  town,  the  name  of 

which,  perhaps,  had  better  remain  unknown. 

[15] 


The  Terror 

My  mission  was  to  inquire  into  certain 
charges  of  extravagance  which  had  been 
laid  against  the  working  people,  that  is,  the 
munition  workers  of  this  especial  town.  It 
was  said  that  the  men  who  used  to  earn 
£2  i  os.  a  week  were  now  getting  from  seven 
to  eight  pounds,  that  "bits  of  girls"  were 
being  paid  two  pounds  instead  of  seven  or 
eight  shillings,  and  that,  in  consequence, 
there  was  an  orgy  of  foolish  extravagance. 
The  girls,  I  was  told,  were  eating  chocolates 
at  four,  five,  and  six  shillings  a  pound,  the 
women  were  ordering  thirty-pound  pianos 
which  they  couldn't  play,  and  the  men 
bought  gold  chains  at  ten  and  twenty 
guineas  apiece. 

I  dived  into  the  town  in  question  and 
found,  as  usual,  that  there  was  a  mixture  of 
truth  and  exaggeration  in  the  stories  that  I 
had  heard.  Gramophones,  for  example: 
they  cannot  be  called  in  strictness  neces- 
saries, but  they  were  undoubtedly  finding  a 
ready  sale,  even  in  the  more  expensive 
[16] 


The  Terror 

brands.  And  I  thought  that  there  were  a 
great  many  very  spick  and  span  perambu- 
lators to  be  seen  on  the  pavement;  smart 
perambulators,  painted  in  tender  shades  of 
color  and  expensively  fitted. 

"And  how  can  you  be  surprised  if  people 
will  have  a  bit  of  a  fling?"  a  worker  said  to 
me.  "We're  seeing  money  for  the  first  time 
in  our  lives,  and  it's  bright.  And  we  work 
hard  for  it,  and  we  risk  our  lives  to  get  it. 
You've  heard  of  explosion  yonder?" 

He  mentioned  certain  works  on  the  out- 
skirts of  the  town.  Of  course,  neither  the 
name  of  the  works  nor  of  the  town  had  been 
printed;  there  had  been  a  brief  notice  of 
"Explosion  at  Munition  Works  in  the 
Northern  District:  Many  Fatalities."  The 
working  man  told  me  about  it,  and  added 
some  dreadful  details. 

"They  wouldn't  let  their  folks  see  bodies; 
screwed  them  up  in  coffins  as  they  found 
them  in  shop.  The  gas  had  done  it." 

"Turned  their  faces  black,  you  mean?" 
£17] 


The  Terror 

"Nay.     They  were  all  as  if  they  had  been 
bitten  to  pieces." 

This  was  a  strange  gas. 

I  asked  the  man  in  the  northern  town  all 
sorts  of  questions  about  the  extraordinary 
explosion  of  which  he  had  spoken  to  me. 
But  he  had  very  little  more  to  say.     As  I 
have  noted  already,  secrets  that  may  not  be 
printed  are  often  deeply  kept;  last  summer 
there  were  very  few  people  outside  high 
official  circles  who  knew  anything  about  the 
"Tanks,"  of  which  we  have  all  been  talking 
lately,  though  these  strange  instruments  of 
war  were  being  exercised  and  tested  in  a 
park  not  far  from  London.     So  the  man  who 
told  me  of  the  explosion  in  the  munition 
factory  was  most  likely  genuine  in  his  pro- 
fession that  he  knew  nothing  more  of  the 
disaster.     I  found  out  that  he  was  a  smelter 
employed  at  a  furnace  on  the  other  side  of 
the  town  to  the  ruined  factory;  he  didn't 
know  even  what  they  had  been  making  there ; 
some  very  dangerous  high  explosive,  he  sup- 
fig] 


The  Terror 

posed.  His  information  was  really  nothing 
more  than  a  bit  of  gruesome  gossip,  which 
he  had  heard  probably  at  third  or  fourth 
or  fifth  hand.  The  horrible  detail  of  faces 
"as  if  they  had  been  bitten  to  pieces"  had 
made  its  violent  impression  on  him,  that  was 
all. 

I  gave  him  up  and  took  a  tram  to  the  dis- 
trict of  the  disaster;  a  sort  of  industrial 
suburb,  five  miles  from  the  center  of  the 
town.  When  I  asked  for  the  factory,  I  was 
told  that  it  was  no  good  my  going  to  it  as 
there  was  nobody  there.  But  I  found  it; 
a  raw  and  hideous  shed  with  a  walled  yard 
about  it,  and  a  shut  gate.  I  looked  for  signs 
of  destruction,  but  there  was  nothing.  The 
roof  was  quite  undamaged;  and  again  it 
struck  me  that  this  had  been  a  strange  ac- 
cident. There  had  been  an  explosion  of  suf- 
ficient violence  to  kill  workpeople  in  the 
building,  but  the  building  itself  showed  no 
wounds  or  scars. 

A  man  came  out  of  the  gate  and  locked 
[19] 


The  Terror         • 

it  behind  him.  I  began  to  ask  him  some 
sort  of  question,  or  rather,  I  began  to 
"open"  for  a  question  with  "A  terrible  busi- 
ness here,  they  tell  me,"  or  some  such  phrase 
of  convention.  I  got  no  farther.  The  man 
asked  me  if  I  saw  a  policeman  walking  down 
the  street.  I  said  I  did,  and  I  was  given 
the  choice  of  getting  about  my  business 
forthwith  or  of  being  instantly  given  in 
charge  as  a  spy.  "  Th'ast  better  be  gone 
and  quick  about  it,"  was,  I  think,  his  final 
advice,  and  I  took  it. 

Well,  I  had  come  literally  up  against  a 
brick  wall.  Thinking  the  problem  over,  I 
could  only  suppose  that  the  smelter  or  his 
informant  had  twisted  the  phrases  of  the 
story.  The  smelter  had  said  the  dead  men's 
faces  were  "bitten  to  pieces";  this  might  be 
an  unconscious  perversion  of  "eaten  away." 
That  phrase  might  describe  well  enough  the 
effect  of  strong  acids,  and,  for  all  I  knew  of 
the  processes  of  munition-making,  such  acids 
might  be  used  and  might  explode  with  hor- 

[20] 


The  Terror 

rible  results  in  some  perilous  stage  of  their 
admixture. 

It  was  a  day  or  two  later  that  the  accident 
to  the  airman,  Western-Reynolds,  came  into 
my  mind.  For  one  of  those  instants  which 
are  far  shorter  than  any  measure  of  time 
there  flashed  out  the  possibility  of  a  link 
between  the  two  disasters.  But  here  was  a 
wild  impossibility,  and  I  drove  it  away. 
And  yet  I  think  that  the  thought,  mad  as  it 
seemed,  never  left  me;  it  was  the  secret 
light  that  at  last  guided  me  through  a  somber 
grove  of  enigmas. 

It  was  about  this  time,  so  far  as  the  date 
can  be  fixed,  that  a  whole  district,  one  might 
say  a  whole  county,  was  visited  by  a  series 
of  extraordinary  and  terrible  calamities, 
which  were  the  more  terrible  inasmuch  as 
they  continued  for  some  time  to  be  in- 
scrutable mysteries.  It  is,  indeed,  doubt- 
ful whether  these  awful  events  do  not  still 
remain  mysteries  to  many  of  those  con- 
[21] 


The  Terror 

earned;  for  before  the  inhabitants  of  this 
part  of  the  country  had  time  to  join  one  link 
of  evidence  to  another  the  circular  was  is- 
sued, and  thenceforth  no  one  knew  how  to 
distinguish  undoubted  fact  from  wild  and 
extravagant  surmise. 

The  district  in  question  is  in  the  far  west 
of  Wales;  I  shall  call  it,  for  convenience, 
Meirion.  In  it  there  is  one  seaside  town  of 
some  repute  with  holiday-makers  for  five  or 
six  weeks  in  the  summer,  and  dotted  about 
the  county  there  are  three  or  four  small  old 
towns  that  seem  drooping  in  a  slow  decay, 
sleepy  and  gray  with  age  and  forgetfulness. 
They  remind  me  of  what  I  have  read  of 
towns  in  the  west  of  Ireland.  Grass  grows 
between  the  uneven  stones  of  the  pavements, 
the  signs  above  the  shop  windows  decline, 
half  the  letters  of  these  signs  are  missing, 
here  and  there  a  house  has  been  pulled  down, 
or  has  been  allowed  to  slide  into  ruin,  and 
wild  greenery  springs  up  through  the  fallen 
stones,  and  there  is  silence  in  all  the  streets. 

[22] 


The  Terror 

And,  it  is  to  be  noted,  these  are  not  places 
that  were  once  magnificent.  The  Celts  have 
never  had  the  art  of  building,  and  so  far  as 
I  can  see,  such  towns  as  Towy  and  Merthyr 
Tegveth  and  Meiros  must  have  been  always 
much  as  they  are  now,  clusters  of  poorish, 
meanly-built  houses,  ill-kept  and  down  at 
heel. 

And  these  few  towns  are  thinly  scattered 
over  a  wild  country  where  north  is  divided 
from  south  by  a  wilder  mountain  range. 
One  of  these  places  is  sixteen  miles  from 
any  station;  the  others  are  doubtfully  and 
deviously  connected  by  single-line  railways 
served  by  rare  trains  that  pause  and  stagger 
and  hesitate  on  their  slow  journey  up  moun- 
tain passes,  or  stop  for  half  an  hour  or  more 
at  lonely  sheds  called  stations,  situated  in 
the  midst  of  desolate  marshes.  A  few  years 
ago  I  traveled  with  an  Irishman  on  one  of 
these  queer  lines,  and  he  looked  to  right  and 
saw  the  bog  with  its  yellow  and  blue  grasses 
and  stagnant  pools,  and  he  looked  to  left  and 
03] 


The  Terror 

saw  a  ragged  hillside,  set  with  gray  stone 
walls.  "I  can  hardly  believe,"  he  said, 
"that  I'm  not  still  in  the  wilds  of  Ireland." 
Here,  then,  one  sees  a  wild  and  divided 
and  scattered  region  a  land  of  outland  hills 
and  secret  and  hidden  valleys.  I  know 
white  farms  on  this  coast  which  must  be 
separate  by  two  hours  of  hard,  rough  walk- 
ing from  any  other  habitation,  which  are 
invisible  from  any  other  house.  And  in- 
land, again,  the  farms  are  often  ringed 
about  by  thick  groves  of  ash,  planted  by  men 
of  old  days  to  shelter  their  roof -trees  from 
rude  winds  of  the  mountain  and  stormy 
winds  of  the  sea;  so  that  these  places,  too, 
are  hidden  away,  to  be  surmised  only  by  the 
wood  smoke  that  rises  from  the  green  sur- 
rounding leaves.  A  Londoner  must  see 
them  to  believe  in  them;  and  even  then  he 
can  scarcely  credit  their  utter  isolation. 

Such,  then  in  the  main  is  Meirion,  and 
on  this  land  in  the  early  summer  of  last 
year    terror    descended — a   terror    without 
[24] 


The  Terror 

shape,  such  as  no  man  there  had  ever  known. 
It  began  with  the  tale  of  a  little  child 
who  wandered  out  into  the  lanes  to  pick 
flowers  one  sunny  afternoon,  and  never  came 
back  to  the  cottage  on  the  hill. 


[25] 


CHAPTER  II  Death  in  the 

Village 


r  "^HE  child  who  was  lost  came  from  a 
lonely  cottage  that  stands  on  the 
M  slope  of  a  steep  hillside  called  the 
Allt,  or  the  height.  The  land  about  it  is 
wild  and  ragged;  here  the  growth  of  gorse 
and  bracken,  here  a  marshy  hollow  of  reeds 
and  rushes,  marking  the  course  of  the  stream 
from  some  hidden  well,  here  thickets  of 
dense  and  tangled  undergrowth,  the  outposts 
of  the  wood.  Down  through  this  broken 
and  uneven  ground  a  path  leads  to  the  lane 
at  the  bottom  of  the  valley;  then  the  land 
rises  again  and  swells  up  to  the  cliffs  over 
the  sea,  about  a  quarter  of  a  mile  away. 
The  little  girl,  Gertrude  Morgan,  asked  her 
mother  if  she  might  go  down  to  the  lane  and 
pick  the  purple  flowers — these  were  orchids 
— that  grew  there,  and  her  mother  gave  her 
[26] 


The  Terror 

leave,  telling  her  she  must  be  sure  to  be  back 
by  tea-time,  as  there  was  apple-tart  for  tea. 

She  never  came  back.  It  was  supposed 
that  she  must  have  crossed  the  road  and 
gone  to  the  cliff's  edge,  possibly  in  order  to 
pick  the  sea-pinks  that  were  then  in  full 
blossom.  She  must  have  slipped,  they  said, 
and  fallen  into  the  sea,  two  hundred  feet 
below.  And,  it  may  be  said  at  once,  that 
there  was  no  doubt  some  truth  in  this  con- 
jecture, though  it  stopped  very  far  short 
of  the  whole  truth.  The  child's  body  must 
have  been  carried  out  by  the  tide,  for  it 
was  never  found. 

The  conjecture  of  a  false  step  or  of  a  fatal 
slide  on  the  slippery  turf  that  slopes  down 
to  the  rocks  was  accepted  as  being  the  only 
explanation  possible.  People  thought  the 
accident  a  strange  one  because,  as  a  rule, 
country  children  living  by  the  cliffs  and  the 
sea  become  wary  at  an  early  age,  and  Ger- 
trude Morgan  was  almost  ten  years  old. 
Still,  as  the  neighbors  said,  "that's  how  it 

[27] 


The  Terror 

must  have  happened,  and  it's  a  great  pity, 
to  be  sure."  But  this  would  not  do  when 
in  a  week's  time  a  strong  young  laborer 
failed  to  come  to  his  cottage  after  the  day's 
work.  His  body  was  found  on  the  rocks  six 
or  seven  miles  from  the  cliffs  where  the 
child  was  supposed  to  have  fallen;  he  was 
going  home  by  a  path  that  he  had  used 
every  night  of  his  life  for  eight  or  nine 
years,  that  he  used  of  dark  nights  in  perfect 
security,  knowing  every  inch  of  it.  The 
police  asked  if  he  drank,  but  he  was  a  tee- 
totaler; if  he  were  subject  to  fits,  but  he 
wasn't.  And  he  was  not  murdered  for  his 
wealth,  since  agricultural  laborers  are  not 
wealthy.  It  was  only  possible  again  to  talk 
of  slippery  turf  and  a  false  step;  but  people 
began  to  be  frightened.  Then  a  woman  was 
found  with  her  neck  broken  at  the  bottom 
of  a  disused  quarry  near  Llanfihangel,  in 
the  middle  of  the  county.  The  "false  step" 
theory  was  eliminated  here,  for  the  quarry 
was  guarded  with  a  natural  hedge  of  gorse 
[28] 


The  Terror 

bushes.  One  would  have  to  struggle  and 
fight  through  sharp  thorns  to  destruction  in 
such  a  place  as  this;  and  indeed  the  gorse 
bushes  were  broken  as  if  some  one  had 
rushed  furiously  through  them,  just  above 
the  place  where  the  woman's  body  was 
found.  And  this  was  strange:  there  was  a 
dead  sheep  lying  beside  her  in  the  pit,  as  if 
the  woman  and  the  sheep  together  had  been 
chased  over  the  brim  of  the  quarry.  But 
chased  by  whom,  or  by  what?  And  then 
there  was  a  new  form  of  terror. 

This  was  in  the  region  of  the  marshes 
under  the  mountain.  A  man  and  his  son, 
a  lad  of  fourteen  or  fifteen,  set  out  early  one 
morning  to  work  and  never  reached  the  farm 
where  they  were  bound.  Their  way  skirted 
the  marsh,  but  it  was  broad,  firm  and  well 
metalled,  and  it  had  been  raised  about  two 
feet  above  the  bog.  But  when  search  was 
made  in  the  evening  of  the  same  day  Phil- 
lips and  his  son  were  found  dead  in  the 
marsh,  covered  with  black  slime  and  pond- 
[29] 


The  Terror 

weed.  And  they  lay  some  ten  yards  from  the 
path,  which,  it  would  seem,  they  must  have 
left  deliberately.  It  was  useless  of  course, 
to  look  for  tracks  in  the  black  ooze,  for  if 
one  threw  a  big  stone  into  it  a  few  seconds 
removed  all  marks  of  the  disturbance.  The 
men  who  found  the  two  bodies  beat  about 
the  verges  and  purlieus  of  the  marsh  in  hope 
of  finding  some  trace  of  the  murderers ;  they 
went  to  and  fro  over  the  rising  ground 
where  the  black  cattle  were  grazing,  they 
searched  the  alder  thickets  by  the  brook; 
but  they  discovered  nothing. 

Most  horrible  of  all  these  horrors,  per- 
haps, was  the  affair  of  the  Highway,  a  lonely 
and  unfrequented  by-road  that  winds  for 
many  miles  on  high  and  lonely  land.  Here, 
a  mile  from  any  other  dwelling,  stands  a 
cottage  on  the  edge  of  a  dark  wood.  It 
was  inhabited  by  a  laborer  named  Williams, 
his  wife,  and  their  three  children.  One  hot 
summer's  evening,  a  man  who  had  been  do- 
ing a  day's  gardening  at  a  rectory  three  or 
[30] 


The  Terror 

four  miles  away,  passed  the  cottage,  and 
stopped  for  a  few  minutes  to  chat  with  Wil- 
liams, the  laborer,  who  was  pottering  about 
his  garden,  while  the  children  were  playing 
on  the  path  by  the  door.  The  two  talked 
of  their  neighbors  and  of  the  potatoes  till 
Mrs.  Williams  appeared  at  the  doorway  and 
said  supper  was  ready,  and  Williams  turned 
to  go  into  the  house.  This  was  about  eight 
o'clock,  and  in  the  ordinary  course  the  fam- 
ily would  have  their  supper  and  be  in  bed  by 
nine,  or  by  half-past  nine  at  latest.  At  ten 
o'clock  that  night  the  local  doctor  was  driv- 
ing home  along  the  Highway.  His  horse 
shied  violently  and  then  stopped  dead  just 
opposite  the  gate  to  the  cottage.  The  doc- 
tor got  down,  frightened  at  what  he  saw; 
and  there  on  the  roadway  lay  Williams,  his 
wife,  and  the  three  children,  stone  dead,  all 
of  them.  Their  skulls  were  battered  in  as  if 
by  some  heavy  iron  instrument;  their  faces 
were  beaten  into  a  pulp. 


CHAPTER  III  The  Doctors 

Theory 

IT  is  not  easy  to  make  any  picture  of  the 
horror  that  lay  dark  on  the  hearts  of 
the  people  of  Meirion.  It  was  no 
longer  possible  to  believe  or  to  pretend  to 
believe  that  these  men  and  women  and  chil- 
dren had  met  their  deaths  through  strange 
accidents.  The  little  girl  and  the  young  la- 
borer might  have  slipped  and  fallen  over  the 
cliffs,  but  the  woman  who  lay  dead  with  the 
dead  sheep  at  the  bottom  of  the  quarry,  the 
two  men  who  had  been  lured  into  the  ooze 
of  the  marsh,  the  family  who  were  found 
murdered  on  the  Highway  before  their  own 
cottage  door;  in  these  cases  there  could  be 
no  room  for  the  supposition  of  accident.  It 
seemed  as  if  it  were  impossible  to  frame  any 
conjecture  or  outline  of  a  conjecture  that 

[32] 


The  Terror 

would  account  for  these  hideous  and,  as  it 
seemed,  utterly  purposeless  crimes.  For  a 
time  people  said  that  there  must  be  a  mad- 
man at  large,  a  sort  of  country  variant  of 
Jack  the  Ripper,  some  horrible  pervert  who 
was  possessed  by  the  passion  of  death,  who 
prowled  darkling  about  that  lonely  land, 
hiding  in  woods  and  in  wild  places,  always 
watching  and  seeking  for  the  victims  of  his 
desire. 

Indeed,  Dr.  Lewis,  who  found  poor  Wil- 
liams, his  wife  and  children  miserably 
slaughtered  on  the  Highway,  was  convinced 
at  first  that  the  presence  of  a  concealed  mad- 
man in  the  countryside  offered  the  only  pos- 
sible solution  to  the  difficulty. 

"I  felt  sure,"  he  said  to  me  afterwards, 
"that  the  Williams's  had  been  killed  by  a 
homicidal  maniac.  It  was  the  nature  of  the 
poor  creatures'  injuries  that  convinced  me 
that  this  was  the  case.  Some  years  ago — 
thirty-seven  or  thirty-eight  years  ago  as  a 
matter  of  fact — I  had  something  to  do  with 
[331 


The  Terror 

a  case  which  on  the  face  of  it  had  a  strong 
likeness  to  the  Highway  murder.  At  that 
time  I  had  a  practice  at  Usk,  in  Monmouth- 
shire. A  whole  family  living  in  a  cottage 
by  the  roadside  were  murdered  one  evening; 
it  was  called,  I  think,  the  Llangibby  murder ; 
the  cottage  was  near  the  village  of  that 
name.  The  murderer  was  caught  in  New- 
port ;  he  was  a  Spanish  sailor,  named  Garcia, 
and  it  appeared  that  he  had  killed  father, 
mother,  and  the  three  children  for  the  sake 
of  the  brass  works  of  an  old  Dutch  clock, 
which  were  found  on  him  when  he  was  ar- 
rested. 

"Garcia  had  been  serving  a  month's  im- 
prisonment in  Usk  Jail  for  some  small  theft, 
and  on  his  release  he  set  out  to  walk  to 
Newport,  nine  or  ten  miles  away;  no  doubt 
to  get  another  ship.  He  passed  the  cottage 
and  saw  the  man  working  in  his  garden. 
Garcia  stabbed  him  with  his  sailor's  knife. 
The  wife  rushed  out;  he  stabbed  her.  Then 
he  went  into  the  cottage  and  stabbed  the 
[34] 


The  Terror 

three  children,  tried  to  set  the  place  on  fire, 
and  made  off  with  the  clockworks.  That 
looked  like  the  deed  of  a  madman,  but  Garcia 
wasn't  mad — they  hanged  him,  I  may  say 
— he  was  merely  a  man  of  a  very  low  type, 
a  degenerate  who  hadn't  the  slightest  value 
for  human  life.  I  am  not  sure,  but  I  think 
he  came  from  one  of  the  Spanish  islands, 
where  the  people  are  said  to  be  degenerates, 
very  likely  from  too  much  inter-breeding. 

"But  my  point  is  that  Garcia  stabbed  to 
kill  and  did  kill,  with  one  blow  in  each  case. 
There  was  no  senseless  hacking  and  slash- 
ing. Now  those  poor  people  on  the  High- 
way had  their  heads  smashed  to  pieces  by 
what  must  have  been  a  storm  of  blows. 
Any  one  of  them  would  have  been  fatal,  but 
the  murderer  must  have  gone  on  raining 
blows  with  his  iron  hammer  on  people  who 
were  already  stone  dead.  And  that  sort  of 
thing  is  the  work  of  a  madman,  and  nothing 
but  a  madman.  That's  how  I  argued  the 
matter  out  to  myself  just  after  the  event. 
[35] 


The  Terror 

"I  was  utterly  wrong,  monstrously  wrong. 
But  who  could  have  suspected  the  truth?" 

Thus  Dr.  Lewis,  and  I  quote  him,  or  the 
substance  of  him,  as  representative  of  most 
of  the  educated  opinion  of  the  district  at 
the  beginnings  of  the  terror.  People  seized 
on  this  theory  largely  because  it  offered  at 
least  the  comfort  of  an  explanation,  an,d 
any  explanation,  even  the  poorest,  is  better 
than  an  intolerable  and  terrible  mystery. 
Besides,  Dr.  Lewis's  theory  was  plausible; 
it  explained  the  lack  of  purpose  that  seemed 
to  characterize  the  murders.  And  yet — 
there  were  difficulties  even  from  the  first. 
It  was  hardly  possible  that  a  strange  mad- 
man should  be  able  to  keep  hidden  in  a 
countryside  where  any  stranger  is  instantly 
noted  and  noticed;  sooner  or  later  he  would 
be  seen  as  he  prowled  along  the  lanes  or 
across  the  wild  places.  Indeed,  a  drunken, 
cheerful,  and  altogether  harmless  tramp  was 
arrested  by  a  farmer  and  his  man  in  the  fact 
and  act  of  sleeping  off  beer  under  a  hedge; 
[36] 


The  Terror 

but  the  vagrant  was  able  to  prove  complete 
and  undoubted  alibis,  and  was  soon  allowed 
to  go  on  his  wandering  way. 

Then  another  theory,  or  rather  a  variant 
of  Dr.  Lewis's  theory,  was  started.  This 
was  to  the  effect  that  the  person  responsible 
for  the  outrages  was,  indeed,  a  madman; 
but  a  madman  only  at  intervals.  It  was 
one  of  the  members  of  the  Forth  Club,  a 
certain  Mr.  Remnant,  who  was  supposed  to 
have  originated  this  more  subtle  explana- 
tion. Mr.  Remnant  was  a  middle-aged  man, 
who,  having  nothing  particular  to  do,  read 
a  great  many  books  by  way  of  conquering 
the  hours.  He  talked  to  the  club — doctors, 
retired  colonels,  parsons,  lawyers — about 
"personality,"  quoted  various  psychological 
text-books  in  support  of  his  contention  that 
personality  was  sometimes  fluid  and  un- 
stable, went  back  to  "Dr.  Jekyll  and  Mr. 
Hyde"  as  good  evidence  of  this  proposition, 
and  laid  stress  on  Dr.  Jekyll's  speculation 
that  the  human  soul,  so  far  from  being  one 
[37] 


The  Terror 

and  indivisible,  might  possibly  turn  out  to 
be  a  mere  polity,  a  state  in  which  dwelt  many 
strange  and  incongruous  citizens,  whose 
characters  were  not  merely  unknown  but  al- 
together unsurmised  by  that  form  of  con- 
sciousness which  so  rashly  assumed  that  it 
was  not  only  the  president  of  the  republic 
but  also  its  sole  citizen. 

"The  long  and  the  short  of  it  is,"  Mr.  Rem- 
nant concluded,  "that  any  one  of  us  may  be 
the  murderer,  though  he  hasn't  the  faintest 
notion  of  the  fact.  Take  Llewelyn  there." 

Mr.  Payne  Llewelyn  was  an  elderly  law- 
yer, a  rural  Tulkinghorn.  He  was  the  he- 
reditary solicitor  to  the  Morgans  of  Pentwyn. 
This  does  not  sound  anything  tremendous 
to  the  Saxons  of  London;  but  the  style  is 
far  more  than  noble  to  the  Celts  of  West 
Wales;  it  is  immemorial;  Teilo  Sant  was  of 
the  collaterals  of  the  first  known  chief  of 
the  race.  And  Mr.  Payne  Llewelyn  did  his 
best  to  look  like  the  legal  adviser  of  this 
ancient  house.  He  was  weighty,  he  was 
[38] 


The  Terror 

cautious,  he  was  sound,  he  was  secure.  I 
have  compared  him  to  Mr.  Tulkinghorn  of 
Lincoln's  Inn  Fields;  but  Mr.  Llewelyn 
would  most  certainly  never  have  dreamed  of 
employing  his  leisure  in  peering  into  the 
cupboards  where  the  family  skeletons  were 
hidden.  Supposing  such  cupboards  to  have 
existed,  Mr.  Payne  Llewelyn  would  have 
risked  large  out-of-pocket  expenses  to  fur- 
nish them  with  double,  triple,  impregnable 
locks.  He  was  a  new  man,  an  advena,  cer- 
tainly; for  he  was  partly  of  the  Conquest, 
being  descended  on  one  side  from  Sir  Payne 
Turberville;  but  he  meant  to  stand  by  the 
old  stock. 

"Take  Llewelyn  now,"  said  Mr.  Remnant. 
"Look  here,  Llewelyn,  can  you  produce  evi- 
dence to  show  where  you  were  on  the  night 
those  people  were  murdered  on  the  High- 
way? I  thought  not." 

Mr.  Llwelyn,  an  elderly  man,  as  I  have 
said,  hesitated  before  speaking. 

"I  thought  not,"  Remnant  went  on. 
[39] 


The  Terror 

"Now  I  say  that  it  is  perfectly  possible  that 
Llewelyn  may  be  dealing  death  throughout 
Meirion,  although  in  his  present  personality 
he  may  not  have  the  faintest  suspicion  that 
there  is  another  Llewelyn  within  him,  a 
Llewelyn  who  follows  murder  as  a  fine  art." 

Mr.  Payne  Llewelyn  did  not  at  all  relish 
Mr.  Remnant's  suggestion  that  he  might 
well  be  a  secret  murderer,  ravening  for 
blood,  remorseless  as  a  wild  beast.  He 
thought  the  phrase  about  his  following  mur- 
der as  a  fine  art  was  both  nonsensical  and 
in  the  worst  taste,  and  his  opinion  was  not 
changed  when  Remnant  pointed  out  that  it 
was  used  by  De  Quincey  in  the  title  of  one 
of  his  most  famous  essays. 

"If  you  had  allowed  me  to  speak,"  he  said 
with  some  coldness  of  manner,  "I  would 
have  told  you  that  on  Tuesday  last,  the 
night  on  which  those  unfortunate  people 
were  murdered  on  the  Highway  I  was  stay- 
ing at  the  Angel  Hotel,  Cardiff.  I  had  busi- 
[40] 


The  Terror 

ness  in  Cardiff,  and  I  was  detained  till 
Wednesday  afternoon." 

Having  given  this  satisfactory  alibi,  Mr. 
Payne  Llewelyn  left  the  club,  and  did  not 
go  near  it  for  the  rest  of  the  week. 

Remnant  explained  to  those  who  stayed 
in  the  smoking  room  that,  of  course,  he  had 
merely  used  Mr.  Llewelyn  as  a  concrete  ex- 
ample of  his  theory,  which,  he  persisted,  had 
the  support  of  a  considerable  body  of  evi- 
dence. 

"There  are  several  cases  of  double  per- 
sonality on  record,"  he  declared.  "And  I 
say  again  that  it  is  quite  possible  that  these 
murders  may  have  been  committed  by  one 
of  us  in  his  secondary  personality.  Why, 
I  may  be  the  murderer  in  my  Remnant  B. 
state,  though  Remnant  A.  knows  nothing 
whatever  about  it,  and  is  perfectly  convinced 
that  he  could  not  kill  a  fowl,  much  less  a 
whole  family.  Isn't  it  so,  Lewis?" 

Dr.  Lewis  said  it  was  so,  in  theory,  but 
he  thought  not  in  fact. 


The  Terror 

"Most  of  the  cases  of  double  or  multiple 
personality  that  have  been  investigated," 
he  said,  "have  been  in  connection  with  the 
very  dubious  experiments  of  hypnotism,  or 
the  still  more  dubious  experiments  of  spir- 
itualism. All  that  sort  of  thing,  in  my 
opinion,  is  like  tinkering  with  the  works  of 
a  clock — amateur  tinkering,  I  mean.  You 
fumble  about  with  the  wheels  and  cogs  and 
bits  of  mechanism  that  you  don't  really  know 
anything  about;  and  then  you  find  your 
clock  going  backwards  or  striking  240  at  tea- 
time.  And  I  believe  it's  just  the  same  thing 
with  these  psychical  research  experiments; 
the  secondary  personality  is  very  likely  the 
result  of  the  tinkering  and  fumbling  with  a 
very  delicate  apparatus  that  we  know  noth- 
ing about.  Mind,  I  can't  say  that  it's  im- 
possible for  one  of  us  to  be  the  Highway 
murderer  in  his  B.  state,  as  Remnant  puts 
it.  But  I  think  it's  extremely  improbable. 
Probability  is  the  guide  of  life,  you  know, 
Remnant,"  said  Dr.  Lewis,  smiling  at  that 
[42] 


The  Terror 

gentleman,  as  if  to  say  that  he  also  had  done 
a  little  reading  in  his  day.  "And  it  follows, 
therefore,  that  improbability  is  also  the 
guide  of  life.  When  you  get  a  very  high 
degree  of  probability,  that  is,  you  are  justi- 
fied in  taking  it  as  a  certainty;  and  on  the 
other  hand,  if  a  supposition  is  highly  im- 
probable, you  are  justified  in  treating  it  as 
an  impossible  one.  That  is,  in  nine  hundred 
and  ninety-nine  cases  out  of  a  thousand." 

"How  about  the  thousandth  case?"  said 
Remnant.  "Supposing  these  extraordinary 
crimes  constitute  the  thousandth  case?" 

The  doctor  smiled  and  shrugged  his  shoul- 
ders, being  tired  of  the  subject.  But  for 
some  little  time  highly  respectable  members 
of  Forth  society  would  look  suspiciously  at 
one  another  wondering  whether,  after  all, 
there  mightn't  be  "something  in  it."  How- 
ever, both  Mr.  Remnant's  somewhat  crazy 
theory  and  Dr.  Lewis's  plausible  theory  be- 
came untenable  when  two  more  victims  of 
an  awful  and  mysterious  death  were  offered 
[43] 


The  Terror 

up  in  sacrifice,  for  a  man  was  found  dead 
in  the  Llanfihangel  quarry,  where  the  woman 
had  been  discovered.  And  on  the  same  day 
a  girl  of  fifteen  was  found  broken  on  the 
jagged  rocks  under  the  cliffs  near  Forth. 
Now,  it  appeared  that  these  two  deaths  must 
have  occurred  at  about  the  same  time,  within 
an  hour  of  one  another,  certainly;  and  the 
distance  between  the  quarry  and  the  cliffs 
by  Black  Rock  is  certainly  twenty  miles. 

"A  motor  could  do  it,"  one  man  said. 

But  it  was  pointed  out  that  there  was  no 
high  road  between  the  two  places;  indeed, 
it  might  be  said  that  there  was  no  road  at 
all  between  them.  There  was  a  network 
of  deep,  narrow,  and  tortuous  lanes  that 
wandered  into  one  another  at  all  manner  of 
queer  angles  for,  say,  seventeen  miles;  this 
in  the  middle,  as  it  were,  between  Black 
Rock  and  the  quarry  at  Llanfihangel.  But 
to  get  to  the  high  land  of  the  cliffs  one  had 
to  take  a  path  that  went  through  two  miles 
of  fields;  and  the  quarry  lay  a  mile  away 
[44] 


The  Terror 

from  the  nearest  by-road  in  the  midst  of 
gorse  and  bracken  and  broken  land.  And, 
finally,  there  was  no  track  of  motor-car  or 
motor-bicycle  in  the  lanes  which  must  have 
been  followed  to  pass  from  one  place  to  the 
other. 

"What  about  an  airplane,  then?"  said  the 
man  of  the  motor-car  theory.  Well,  there 
was  certainly  an  aerodrome  not  far  from  one 
of  the  two  places  of  death;  but  somehow, 
nobody  believed  that  the  Flying  Corps  har- 
bored a  homicidal  maniac.  It  seemed  clear, 
therefore,  that  there  must  be  more  than  one 
person  concerned  in  the  terror  of  Meirion. 
And  Dr.  Lewis  himself  abandoned  his  own 
theory. 

"As  I  said  to  Remnant  at  the  Club,"  he 
remarked,  "improbability  is  the  guide  of  life. 
I  can't  believe  that  there  are  a  pack  of  mad- 
men or  even  two  madmen  at  large  in  the 
country.  I  give  it  up." 

And  now  a  fresh  circumstance  or  set  of 
circumstances  became  manifest  to  confound 
[45] 


The  Terror 

judgment  and  to  awaken  new  and  wild  sur- 
mises. For  at  about  this  time  people  real- 
ized that  none  of  the  dreadful  events  that 
were  happening  all  about  them  was  so  much 
as  mentioned  in  the  Press.  I  have  already 
spoken  of  the  fate  of  the  Meiros  Observer. 
This  paper  was  suppressed  by  the  authori- 
ties because  it  had  inserted  a  brief  paragraph 
about  some  person  who  had  been  "found 
dead  under  mysterious  circumstances";  I 
think  that  paragraph  referred  to  the  first 
death  of  Llanfihangel  quarry.  Thence- 
forth, horror  followed  on  horror,  but  no 
word  was  printed  in  any  of  the  local  jour- 
nals. The  curious  went  to  the  newspaper 
offices — there  were  two  left  in  the  county— 
but  found  nothing  save  a  firm  refusal  to 
discuss  the  matter.  And  the  Cardiff  pa- 
pers were  drawn  and  found  blank;  and  the 
London  Press  was  apparently  ignorant  of 
the  fact  that  crimes  that  had  no  parallel  were 
terrorizing  a  whole  countryside.  Every- 
body wondered  what  could  have  happened, 
[46] 


The  Terror 

what  was  happening;  and  then  it  was  whis- 
pered that  the  coroner  would  allow  no  in- 
quiry to  be  made  as  to  these  deaths  of  dark- 
ness. 

"In  consequence  of  instructions  received 
from  the  Home  Office,"  one  coroner  was  un- 
derstood to  have  said,  "I  have  to  tell  the  jury 
that  their  business  will  be  to  hear  the  med- 
ical evidence  and  to  bring  in  a  verdict  im- 
mediately in  accordance  with  that  evidence. 
I  shall  disallow  all  questions." 

One  jury  protested.  The  foreman  re- 
fused to  bring  in  any  verdict  at  all. 

"Very  good,"  said  the  coroner.  "Then  I 
beg  to  inform  you,  Mr.  Foreman  and  gentle- 
men of  the  jury,  that  under  the  Defense  of 
the  Realm  Act,  I  have  power  to  supersede 
your  functions,  and  to  enter  a  verdict  ac- 
cording to  the  evidence  which  has  been  laid 
before  the  Court  as  if  it  had  been  the  verdict 
of  you  all." 

The  foreman  and  jury  collapsed  and  ac- 
cepted what  they  could  not  avoid.  But  the 

[47] 


The  Terror 

rumors  that  got  abroad  of  all  this,  added  to 
the  known  fact  that  the  terror  was  ignored 
in  the  Press,  no  doubt  by  official  command, 
increased  the  panic  that  was  now;  arising, 
and  gave  it  a  new  direction.  Clearly,  people 
reasoned,  these  Government  restrictions  and 
prohibitions  could  only  refer  to  the  war,  to 
some  great  danger  in  connection  with  the 
war.  And  that  being  so,  it  followed  that 
the  outrages  which  must  be  kept  so  secret 
were  the  work  of  the  enemy,  that  is  of  con- 
cealed German  agents. 


[48] 


CHAPTER  IV  The  Spread  of 

the  Terror 

IT  is  time,  I  think,  for  me  to  make  one 
point  clear.  I  began  this  history  with 
certain  references  to  an  extraordinary 
accident  to  an  airman  whose  machine  fell  to 
the  ground  after  collision  with  a  huge  flock 
of  pigeons;  and  then  to  an  explosion  in  a 
northern  munition  factory,  an  explosion,  as 
I  noted,  of  a  very  singular  kind.  Then  I 
deserted  the  neighborhood  of  London,  and 
the  northern  district,  and  dwelt  on  a  myste- 
rious and  terrible  series  of  events  which 
occurred  in  the  summer  of  1915  in  a  Welsh 
county,  which  I  have  named,  for  conven- 
ience, Meirion. 

Well,  let  it  be  understood  at  once  that  all 
this  detail  that  I  have  given  about  the  oc- 
currences in  Meirion  does  not  imply  that  the 
[49] 


The  Terror 

county  in  the  far  west  was  alone  or  espe- 
cially afflicted  by  the  terror  that  was  over 
the  land.  They  tell  me  that  in  the  villages 
about  Dartmoor  the  stout  Devonshire  hearts 
sank  as  men's  hearts  used  to  sink  in  the  time 
of  plague  and  pestilence.  There  was  hor- 
ror, too,  about  the  Norfolk  Broads,  and  far 
up  by  Perth  no  one  would  venture  on  the 
path  that  leads  by  Scone  to  the  wooded 
heights  above  the  Tay.  And  in  the  indus- 
trial districts :  I  met  a  man  by  chance  one 
day  in  an  odd  London  corner  who  spoke  with 
horror  of  what  a  friend  had  told  him. 

"  'Ask  no  questions,  Ned,'  he  says  to  me, 
'but  I  tell  yow  a'  was  in  Bairnigan  t'other 
day,  and  a'  met  a  pal  who'd  seen  three  hun- 
dred coffins  going  out  of  a  works  not  far 
from  there.' ' 

And  then  the  ship  that  hovered  outside 
the  mouth  of  the  Thames  with  all  sails  set 
and  beat  to  and  fro  in  the  wind,  and  never 
answered  any  hail,  and  showed  no  light! 
The  forts  shot  at  her  and  brought  down  one 
[5o] 


The  Terror 

of  the  masts,  but  she  went  suddenly  about 
with  a  change  of  wind  under  what  sail  still 
stood,  and  then  veered  down  Channel,  and 
drove  ashore  at  last  on  the  sandbanks  and 
pinewoods  of  Arcachon,  and  not  a  man  alive 
on  her,  but  only  rattling  heaps  of  bones! 
That  last  voyage  of  the  Semiramis  would  be 
something  horribly  worth  telling;  but  I  only 
heard  it  at  a  distance  as  a  yarn,  and  only 
believed  it  because  it  squared  with  other 
things  that  I  knew  for  certain. 

This,  then,  is  my  point ;  I  have  written  of 
the  terror  as  it  fell  on  Meirion,  simply  be- 
cause I  have  had  opportunities  of  getting 
close  there  to  what  really  happened.  Third 
or  fourth  or  fifth  hand  in  the  other  places; 
but  round  about  Forth  and  Merthyr  Teg- 
veth  I  have  spoken  with  people  who  have 
seen  the  tracks  of  the  terror  with  their  own 
eyes. 

Well,  I  have  said  that  the  people  of  that 
far  western  county  realized,  not  only  that 
death  was  abroad  in  their  quiet  lanes  and 


The  Terror 

on  their  peaceful  hills,  but  that  for  some 
reason  it  was  to  be  kept  all  secret.  News- 
papers might  not  print  any  news  of  it,  the 
very  juries  summoned  to  investigate  it  were 
allowed  to  investigate  nothing.  And  so  they 
concluded  that  this  veil  of  secrecy  must 
somehow  be  connected  with  the  war;  and 
from  this  position  it  was  not  a  long  way  to 
a  further  inference:  that  the  murderers  of 
innocent  men  and  women  and  children  were 
either  Germans  or  agents  of  Germany.  It 
would  be  just  like  the  Huns,  everybody 
agreed,  to  think  out  such  a  devilish  scheme 
as  this;  and  they  always  thought  out  their 
schemes  beforehand.  They  hoped  to  seize 
Paris  in  a  few  weeks,  but  when  they  were 
beaten  on  the  Marne  they  had  their  trenches 
on  the  Aisne  ready  to  fall  back  on:  it  had 
all  been  prepared  years  before  the  war. 
And  so,  no  doubt,  they  had  devised  this  ter- 
rible plan  against  England  in  case  they  could 
not  beat  us  in  open  fight:  there  were  people 
ready,  very  likely,  all  over  the  country,  who 
[52] 


The  Terror 

were  prepared  to  murder  and  destroy  every- 
where as  soon  as  they  got  the  word.  In  this 
way  the  Germans  intended  to  sow  terror 
throughout  England  and  fill  our  hearts  with 
panic  and  dismay,  hoping  so  to  weaken  their 
enemy  at  home  that  he  would  lose  all  heart 
over  the  war  abroad.  It  was  the  Zeppelin 
notion,  in  another  form;  they  were  commit- 
ting these  horrible  and  mysterious  outrages 
thinking  that  we  should  be  frightened  out 
of  our  wits. 

It  all  seemed  plausible  enough;  Germany 
had  by  this  time  perpetrated  so  many  hor- 
rors and  had  so  excelled  in  devilish  ingenui- 
ties that  no  abomination  seemed  too  abom- 
inable to  be  probable,  or  too  ingeniously 
wicked  to  be  beyond  the  tortuous  malice  of 
the  Hun.  But  then  came  the  questions  as 
to  who  the  agents  of  this  terrible  design 
were,  as  to  where  they  lived,  as  to  how  they 
contrived  to  move  unseen  from  field  to  field, 
from  lane  to  lane.  All  sorts  of  fantastic  at- 
tempts were  made  to  answer  these  questions ; 
[53] 


The  Terror 

but  it  was  felt  that  they  remained  unan- 
swered. Some  suggested  that  the  murder- 
ers landed  from  submarines,  or  flew  from 
hiding  places  on  the  West  Coast  of  Ireland, 
coming  and  going  by  night;  but  there  were 
seen  to  be  flagrant  impossibilities  in  both 
these  suggestions.  Everybody  agreed  that 
the  evil  work  was  no  doubt  the  work  of  Ger- 
many ;  but  nobody  could  begin  to  guess  how 
it  was  done.  Somebody  at  the  Club  asked 
Remnant  for  his  theory. 

"My  theory,"  said  that  ingenious  person, 
"is  that  human  progress  is  simply  a  long 
march  from  one  inconceivable  to  another. 
Look  at  that  airship  of  ours  that  came  over 
Forth  yesterday:  ten  years  ago  that  would 
have  been  an  inconceivable  sight.  Take  the 
steam  engine,  take  printing,  take  the  theory 
of  gravitation:  they  were  all  inconceivable 
till  somebody  thought  of  them.  So  it  is,  no 
doubt,  with  this  infernal  dodgery  that  we're 
talking  about:  the  Huns  have  found  it  out, 
and  we  haven't;  and  there  you  are.  We 
[54] 


The  Terror 

can't  conceive  how  these  poor  people  have 
been  murdered,  because  the  method's  incon- 
ceivable to  us." 

The  club  listened  with  some  awe  to  this 
high  argument.  After  Remnant  had  gone, 
one  member  said: 

''Wonderful  man,  that."  "Yes,"  said  Dr. 
Lewis.  "He  was  asked  whether  he  knew 
something.  And  his  reply  really  amounted 
to  'No,  I  don't.'  But  I  have  never  heard 
it  better  put." 

It  was,  I  suppose,  at  about  this  time  when 
the  people  were  puzzling  their  heads  as  to 
the  secret  methods  used  by  the  Germans  or 
their  agents  to  accomplish  their  crimes  that 
a  very  singular  circumstance  became  known 
to  a  few  of  the  Forth  people.  It  related  to 
the  murder  of  the  Williams  family  on  the 
Highway  in  front  of  their  cottage  door.  I 
do  not  know  that  I  have  made  it  plain  that 
the  old  Roman  road  called  the  Highway  fol- 
lows the  course  of  a  long,  steep  hill  that  goes 
[55] 


The  Terror 

steadily  westward  till  it  slants  down  and 
droops  towards  the  sea.  On  either  side  of 
the  road  the  ground  falls  away,  here  into 
deep  shadowy  woods,  here  to  high  pastures, 
now  and  again  into  a  field  of  corn,  but  for 
the  most  part  into  the  wild  and  broken  land 
that  is  characteristic  of  Arfon.  The  fields 
are  long  and  narrow,  stretching  up  the  steep 
hillside;  they  fall  into  sudden  dips  and  hol- 
lows, a  well  springs  up  in  the  midst  of  one 
and  a  grove  of  ash  and  thorn  bends  over  it, 
shading  it ;  and  beneath  it  the  ground  is  thick 
with  reeds  and  rushes.  And  then  may  come 
on  either  side  of  such  a  field  territories  glis- 
tening with  the  deep  growth  of  bracken,  and 
rough  with  gorse  and  rugged  with  thick- 
ets of  blackthorn,  green  lichen  hanging 
strangely  from  the  branches;  such  are  the 
lands  on  either  side  of  the  Highway. 

Now  on  the  lower  slopes  of  it,  beneath 

the  Williams's  cottage,  some  three  or  four 

fields  down  the  hill,  there  is  a  military  camp. 

The  place  has  been  used  as  a  camp  for  many 

[56] 


The  Terror 

years,  and  lately  the  site  has  been  extended 
and  huts  have  been  erected.  But  a  consider- 
able number  of  the  men  were  under  canvas 
here  in  the  summer  of  1915. 

On  the  night  of  the  Highway  murder  this 
camp,  as  it  appeared  afterwards,  was  the 
scene  of  the  extraordinary  panic  of  the 
horses. 

A  good  many  men  in  the  camp  were  asleep 
in  their  tents  soon  after  9.30,  when  the  Last 
Post  was  sounded.  They  woke  up  in  panic. 
There  was  a  thundering  sound  on  the  steep 
hillside  above  them,  and  down  upon  the  tents 
came  half  a  dozen  horses,  mad  with<  fright, 
trampling  the  canvas,  trampling  the  men, 
bruising  dozens  of  them  and  killing  two. 

Everything  was  in  wild  confusion,  men 
groaning  and  screaming  in  the  darkness, 
struggling  with  the  canvas  and  the  twisted 
ropes,  shouting  out,  some  of  them,  raw  lads 
enough,  that  the  Germans  had  landed,  others 
wiping  the  blood  from  their  eyes,  a  few, 
[57] 


The  Terror 

roused  suddenly  from  heavy  sleep,  hitting 
out  at  one1  another,  officers  coming  up  at  the 
double  roaring  out  orders  to  the  sergeants, 
a  party  of  soldiers  who  were  just  returning 
to  camp  from  the  village  seized  with  fright 
at  what  they  could  scarcely  see  or  distin- 
guish, at  the  wildness  of  the  shouting  and 
cursing  and  groaning  that  they  could  not 
understand,  bolting  out  of  the  camp  again 
and  racing  for  their  lives  back  to  the  vil- 
lage: everything  in  the  maddest  confusion 
of  wild  disorder. 

Some  of  the  men  had  seen  the  horses  gal- 
loping down  the  hill  as  if  terror  itself  was 
driving  them.  They  scattered  off  into  the 
darkness,  and  somehow  or  another  found 
their  way  back  in  the  night  to  their  pasture 
above  the  camp.  They  were  grazing  there 
peacefully  in  the  morning,  and  the  only  sign 
of  the  panic  of  the  night  before  was  the  mud 
they  had  scattered  all  over  themselves  as 
they  pelted  through  a  patch  of  wet  ground. 
The  farmer  said  they  were  as  quiet  a  lot  as 
[58] 


The  Terror 

any  in  Meirion ;  he  could  make  nothing  of  it. 

"Indeed,"  he  said,  "I  believe  they  must 
have  seen  the  devil  himself  to  be  in  such  a 
fright  as  that:  save  the  people!" 

Now  all  this  was  kept  as  quiet  as  might 
be  at  the  time  when  it  happened;  it  became 
known  to  the  men  of  the  Forth  Club  in  the 
days  when  they  were  discussing  the  difficult 
question  of  the  German  outrages,  as  the 
murders  were  commonly  called.  And  this 
wild  stampede  of  the  farm  horses  was  held 
by  some  to  be  evidence  of  the  extraordinary 
and  unheard-of  character  of  the  dreadful 
agency  that  was  at  work.  One  of  the  mem- 
bers of  the  club  had  been  told  by  an  officer 
who  was  in  the  camp  at  the  time  of  the  panic 
that  the  horses  that  came  charging  down 
were  in  a  perfect  fury  of  fright,  that  he  had 
never  seen  horses  in  such  a  state,  and  so 
there  was  endless  speculation  as  to  the  na- 
ture of  the  sight  or  the  sound  that  had 
driven  half  a  dozen  quiet  beasts  into  raging 
madness. 

[59] 


The  Terror 

Then,  in  the  middle  of  this  talk,  two  or 
three  other  incidents,  quite  as  odd  and  in- 
comprehensible, came  to  be  known,  borne  on 
chance  trickles  of  gossip  that  came  into  the 
towns  from  outland  farms,  or  were  carried 
by  cottagers  tramping  into  Forth  on  mar- 
ket-day with  a  fowl  or  two  and  eggs  and 
garden  stuff;  scraps  and  fragments  of  talk 
gathered  by  servants  from  the  country  folk 
and  repeated  to  their  mistresses.  And 
in  such  ways  it  came  out  that  up  at  Plas 
Newydd  there  had  been  a  terrible  business 
over  swarming  the  bees;  they  had  turned 
as  wild  as  wasps  and  much  more  savage. 
They  had  come  about  the  people  who  were 
taking  the  swarms  like  a  cloud.  They  set- 
tled on  one  man's  face  so  that  you  could  not 
see  the  flesh  for  the  bees  crawling  all  over 
it,  and  they  had  stung  him  so  badly  that  the 
doctor  did  not  know  whether  he  would  get 
over  it,  and  they  had  chased  a  girl  who  had 
come  out  to  see  the  swarming,  and  settled 
on  her  and  stung  her  to  death.  Then  they 
[60] 


The  Terror 

had  gone  off  to  a  brake  below  the  farm  and 
got  into  a  hollow  tree  there,  and  it  was  not 
safe  to  go  near  it,  for  they  would  come  out 
at  you  by  day  or  by  night. 

And  much  the  same  thing  had  happened, 
it  seemed,  at  three  or  four  farms  and  cot- 
tages where  bees  were  kept.  And  there 
were  stories,  hardly  so  clear  or  so  credible, 
of  sheep  dogs,  mild  and  trusted  beasts,  turn- 
ing as  savage  as  wolves  and  injuring  the 
farm  boys  in  a  horrible  manner — in  one  case 
it  was  said  with  fatal  results.  It  was  cer- 
tainly true  that  old  Mrs.  Owen's  favorite 
Brahma-Dorking  cock  had  gone  mad;  she 
came  into  Forth  one  Saturday  morning  with 
her  face  and  her  neck  all  bound  up  and  plas- 
tered. She  had  gone  out  to  her  bit  of  a  field 
to  feed  the  poultry  the  night  before,  and  the 
bird  had  flown  at  her  and  attacked  her  most 
savagely,  inflicting  some  very  nasty  wounds 
before  she  could  beat  it  off. 

"There  was  a  stake  handy,  lucky  for  me," 
she  said,  "and  I  did  beat  him  and  beat  him 
[61] 


The  Terror 

till  the  life  was  out  of  him.     But  what  is 
come  to  the  world,  whatever?" 

Now  Remnant,  the  man  of  theories,  was 
also  a  man  of  extreme  leisure.  It  was  un- 
derstood that  he  had  succeeded  to  ample 
means  when  he  was  quite  a  young  man,  and 
after  tasting  the  savors  of  the  law,  as  it 
were,  for  half  a  dozen  terms  at  the  board 
of  the  Middle  Temple,  he  had  decided  that 
it  would  be  senseless  to  bother  himself  with 
passing  examinations  for  a  profession  which 
he  had  not  the  faintest  intention  of  practis- 
ing. So  he  turned  a  deaf  ear  to  the  call 
of  "Manger"  ringing  through  the  Temple 
Courts,  and  set  himself  out  to  potter  ami- 
ably through  the  world.  He  had  pottered 
all  over  Europe,  he  had  looked  at  Africa, 
and  had  even  put  his  head  in  at  the  door 
of  the  East,  on  a  trip  which  included  the 
Greek  isles  and  Constantinople.  Now,  get- 
ting into  the  middle  fifties,  he  had  settled 
at  Forth  for  the  sake,  as  he  said,  of  the  Gulf 
[62] 


The  Terror 

Stream  and  the  fuchsia  hedges,  and  pottered 
over  his  books  and  his  theories  and  the  local 
gossip.  He  was  no  more  brutal  than  the 
general  public,  which  revels  in  the  details  of 
mysterious  crime;  but  it  must  be  said  that 
the  terror,  black  though  it  was,  was  a  boon 
to  him.  He  peered  and  investigated  and 
poked  about  with  the  relish  of  a  man  to 
whose  life  a  new  zest  has  been  added.  He 
listened  attentively  to  the  strange  tales  of 
bees  and  dogs  and  poultry  that  came  into 
Forth  with  the  country  baskets  of  butter, 
rabbits,  and  green  peas;  and  he  evolved  at 
last  a  most  extraordinary  theory. 

Full  of  this  discovery,  as  he  thought  it,  he 
went  one  night  to  see  Dr.  Lewis  and  take  his 
view  of  the  matter. 

"I  want  to  talk  to  you,"  said  Remnant  to 
the  doctor,  "about  what  I  have  called  pro- 
visionally, the  Z  Ray." 


[63] 


CHAPTER  V          The  Incident  of  the 

Unknown  Tree 

DR.   LEWIS,   smiling  indulgently, 
and    quite    prepared    for    some 
monstrous    piece    of    theorizing, 
led  Remnant  into  the  room  that  overlooked 
the  terraced  garden  and  the  sea. 

The  doctor's  house,  though  it  was  only  a 
ten  minutes'  walk  from  the  center  of  the 
town,  seemed  remote  from  all  other  habita- 
tions. The  drive  to  it  from  the  road  came 
through  a  deep  grove  of  trees  and  a  dense 
shrubbery,  trees  were  about  the  house  on 
either  side,  mingling  with  neighboring 
groves,  and  below,  the  garden  fell  down, 
terrace  by  green  terrace,  to  wild  growth,  a 
twisted  path  amongst  red  rocks,  and  at  last 
to  the  yellow  sand  of  a  little  cove.  The 
room  to  which  the  doctor  took  Remnant 
[64] 


The  Terror 

looked  over  these  terraces  and  across  the 
water  to  the  dim  boundaries  of  the  bay.  It 
had  French  windows  that  were  thrown  wide 
open,  and  the  two  men  sat  in  the  soft  light 
of  the  lamp — this  was  before  the  days  of 
severe  lighting  regulations  in  the  Far  West 
— and  enjoyed  the  sweet  odors  and  the  sweet 
vision  of  the  summer  evening.  Then  Rem- 
nant began : 

"I  suppose,  Lewis,  you've  heard  these 
extraordinary  stories  of  bees  and  dogs  and 
things  that  have  been  going  about  lately?" 

"Certainly  I  have  heard  them.  I  was 
called  in  at  Plas  Newydd,  and  treated 
Thomas  Trevor,  who's  only  just  out  of  dan- 
ger, by  the  way.  I  certified  for  the  poor 
child,  Mary  Trevor.  She  was  dying  when 
I  got  to  the  place.  There  was  no  doubt  she 
was  stung  to  death  by  bees,  and  I  believe 
there  were  other  very  similar  cases  at 
Llantarnam  and  Morwen;  none  fatal,  I 
think.  What  about  them?" 

"Well :  then  there  are  the  stories  of  good- 
[65] 


The  Terror 

tempered  old  sheepdogs  turning  wicked  and 
'savaging'  children?" 

"Quite  so.  I  haven't  seen  any  of  these 
cases  professionally;  but  I  believe  the 
stories  are  accurate  enough." 

"And  the  old  woman  assaulted  by  her 
own  poultry?" 

"That's  perfectly  true.  Her  daughter 
put  some  stuff  of  their  own  concoction  on 
her  face  and  neck,  and  then  she  came  to  me. 
The  wounds  seemed  going  all  right,  so  I  told 
her  to  continue  the  treatment,  whatever  it 
might  be." 

"Very  good,"  said  Mr.  Remnant.  He 
spoke  now  with  an  italic  impressiveness. 
"Don't  you  see  the  link  between  all  this  and 
the  horrible  things  that  have  been  happening 
about  here  for  the  last  month?" 

Lewis  stared  at  Remnant  in  amazement. 
He  lifted  his  red  eyebrows  and  lowered  them 
in  a  kind  of  scowl.  His  speech  showed 
traces  of  his  native  accent. 

"Great  burning!"  he  exclaimed.  "What 
[66] 


The  Terror 

on  earth  are  you  getting  at  now  ?  It  is  mad- 
ness. Do  you  mean  to  tell  me  that  you  think 
there  is  some  connection  between  a  swarm  or 
two  of  bees  that  have  turned  nasty,  a  cross 
dog,  and  a  wicked  old  barn-door  cock  and 
these  poor  people  that  have  been  pitched 
over  the  cliffs  and  hammered  to  death  on 
the  road?  There's  no  sense  in  it,  you 
know." 

"I  am  strongly  inclined  to  believe  that 
there  is  a  great  deal  of  sense  in  it,"  replied 
Remnant,  with  extreme  calmness.  "Look 
here,  Lewis,  I  saw  you  grinning  the  other 
day  at  the  club  when  I  was  telling  the  fel- 
lows that  in  my  opinion  all  these  outrages 
had  been  committed,  certainly  by  the  Ger- 
mans, but  by  some  method  of  which  we  have 
no  conception.  But  what  I  meant  to  say 
when  I  talked  about  inconceivables  was  just 
this:  that  the  Williams's  and  the  rest  of 
them  have  been  killed  in  some  way  that's 
not  in  theory  at  all,  not  in  our  theory,  at 
all  events,  some  way  we've  not  contemplated, 
[67] 


The  Terror 

not  thought  of  for  an  instant.     Do  you  see 
my  point?" 

"Well,  in  a  sort  of  way.  You  mean 
there's  an  absolute  originality  in  the  method? 
I  suppose  that  is  so.  But  what  next?" 

Remnant  seemed  to  hesitate,  partly  from 
a  sense  of  the  portentous  nature  of  what  he 
was  about  to  say,  partly  from  a  sort  of  half- 
unwillingness  to  part  with  so  profound  a 
secret. 

"Well,"  he  said,  "you  will  allow  that  we 
have  two  sets  of  phenomena  of  a  very 
extraordinary  kind  occurring  at  the  same 
time.  Don't  you  think  that  it's  only  reason- 
able to  connect  the  two  sets  with  one  an- 
other." 

"So  the  philosopher  of  Tenterden  steeple 
and  the  Goodwin  Sands  thought,  certainly," 
said  Lewis.  "But  what  is  the  connection? 
Those  poor  folks  on  the  Highway  weren't 
stung  by  bees  or  worried  by  a  dog.  And 
horses  don't  throw  people  over  cliffs  or  stifle 
them  in  marshes." 

[68] 


The  Terror 

"No;  I  never  meant  to  suggest  anything 
so  absurd.  It  is  evident  to  me  that  in  all 
these  cases  of  animals  turning  suddenly  sav- 
age the  cause  has  been  terror,  panic,  fear. 
The  horses  that  went  charging  into  the  camp 
were  mad  with  fright,  we  know.  And  I  say 
that  in  the  other  instances  we  have  been 
discussing  the  cause  was  the  same.  The 
creatures  were  exposed  to  an  infection  of 
fear,  and  a  frightened  beast  or  bird  or  in- 
sect uses  its  weapons,  whatever  they  may  be. 
If,  for  example,  there  had  been  anybody 
with  those  horses  when  they  took  their  panic 
they  would  have  lashed  out  at  him  with  their 
heels." 

"Yes,  I  dare  say  that  that  is  so.     Well." 

"Well;   my   belief   is   that   the   Germans 

have  made  an  extraordinary  discovery.     I 

have  called  it  the  Z  Ray.     You  know  that 

the  ether  is  merely  an  hypothesis;  we  have 

to  suppose  that  it's  there  to  account  for  the 

passage  of  the  Marconi  current  from  one 

place  to  another.     Now,  suppose  that  there 

[69] 


The  Terror 

is  a  psychic  ether  as  well  as  a  material  ether, 
suppose  that  it  is  possible  to  direct  irresist- 
ible impulses  across  this  medium,  suppose 
that  these  impulses  are  towards  murder  or 
suicide;  then  I  think  that  you  have  an  ex- 
planation of  the  terrible  series  of  events  that 
have  been  happening  in  Meirion  for  the  last 
few  weeks.  And  it  is  quite  clear  to  my  mind 
that  the  horses  and  the  other  creatures  have 
been  exposed  to  this  Z  Ray,  and  that  it  has 
produced  on  them  the  effect  of  terror,  with 
ferocity  as  the  result  of  terror.  Now  what 
do  you  say  to  that?  Telepathy,  you  know, 
is  well  established;  so  is  hypnotic  sugges- 
tion. You  have  only  to  look  in  the  'Ency- 
clopaedia Britannica'  to  see  that,  and  sug- 
gestion is  so  strong  in  some  cases  as  to  be 
an  irresistible  imperative.  Now  don't  you 
feel  that  putting  telepathy  and  suggestion 
together,  as  it  were,  you  have  more  than  the 
elements  of  what  I  call  the  Z  Ray?  I  feel 
myself  that  I  have  more  to  go  on  in  making 
my  hypothesis  than  the  inventor  of  the 
[70] 


The  Terror 

steam-engine  had  in  making  his  hypothesis 
when  he  saw  the  lid  of  the  kettle  bobbing  up 
and  down.  What  do  you  say?" 

Dr.  Lewis  made  no  answer.  He  was 
watching  the  growth  of  a  new,  unknown  tree 
in  his  garden. 

The  doctor  made  no  answer  to  Remnant's 
question.  For  one  thing,  Remnant  was  pro- 
fuse in  his  eloquence — he  has  been  rigidly 
condensed  in  this  history — and  Lewis  was 
tired  of  the  sound  of  his  voice.  For  another 
thing,  he  found  the  Z  Ray  theory  almost  too 
extravagant  to  be  bearable,  wild  enough  to 
tear  patience  to  tatters.  And  then  as  the 
tedious  argument  continued  Lewis  became 
conscious  that  there  was  something  strange 
about  the  night. 

It  was  a  dark  summer  night.  The  moon 
was  old  and  faint,  above  the  Dragon's  Head 
across  the  bay,  and  the  air  was  very  still. 
It  was  so  still  that  Lewis  had  noted  that 
not  a  leaf  stirred  on  the  very  tip  of  a  high 


The  Terror 

tree  that  stood  out  against  the  sky;  and  yet 
he  knew  that  he  was  listening  to  some  sound 
that  he  could  not  determine  or  define.  It 
was  not  the  wind  in  the  leaves,  it  was  not 
the  gentle  wash  of  the  water  of  the  sea 
against  the  rocks ;  that  latter  sound  he  could 
distinguish  quite  easily.  But  there  was 
something  else.  It  was  scarcely  a  sound ;  it 
was  as  if  the  air  itself  trembled  and  flut- 
tered, as  the  air  trembles  in  a  church  when 
they  open  the  great  pedal  pipes  of  the  organ. 
The  doctor  listened  intently.  It  was  not 
an  illusion,  the  sound  was  not  in  his  own 
head,  as  he  had  suspected  for  a  moment ;  but 
for  the  life  of  him  he  could  not  make  out 
whence  it  came  or  what  it  was.  He  gazed 
down  into  the  night  over  the  terraces  of  his 
garden,  now  sweet  with  the  scent  of  the  flow- 
ers of  the  night ;  tried  to  peer  over  the  tree- 
tops  across  the  sea  towards  the  Dragon's 
Head.  It  struck  him  suddenly  that  this 
strange  fluttering  vibration  of  the  air  might 
be  the  noise  of  a  distant  aeroplane  or  air- 
[72] 


The  Terror 

ship;  there  was  not  the  usual  droning  hum, 
but  this  sound  might  be  caused  by  a  new  type 
of  engine.  A  new  type  of  engine?  Possi- 
bly it  was  an  enemy  airship;  their  range,  it 
had  been  said,  was  getting  longer ;  and  Lewis 
was  just  going  to  call  Remnant's  attention 
to  the  sound,  to  its  possible  cause,  and  to  the 
possible  danger  that  might  be  hovering  over 
them,  when  he  saw  something  that  caught 
his  breath  and  his  heart  with  wild  amaze- 
ment and  a  touch  of  terror. 

He  had  been  staring  upward  into  the  sky, 
and,  about  to  speak  to  Remnant,  he  had  let 
his  eyes  drop  for  an  instant.  He  looked 
down  towards  the  trees  in  the  garden,  and 
saw  with  utter  astonishment  that  one  had 
changed  its  shape  in  the  few  hours  that  had 
passed  since  the  setting  of  the  sun.  There 
was  a  thick  grove  of  ilexes  bordering  the 
lowest  terrace,  and  above  them  rose  one  tall 
pine,  spreading  its  head  of  sparse,  dark 
branches  dark  against  the  sky. 

As  Lewis  glanced  down  over  the  terraces 

[73] 


The  Terror 

he  saw  that  the  tall  pine  tree  was  no  longer 
there.     In   its   place   there   rose  above  the 
ilexes  what  might  have  been  a  greater  ilex; 
there  was  the  blackness  of  a  dense  growth 
of  foliage  rising  like  a  broad  and  far-spread- 
ing and  rounded  cloud  over  the  lesser  trees. 
Here,  then  was  a  sight  wholy  incredible, 
impossible.     It  is  doubtful  whether  the  pro- 
cess of  the  human  mind  in  such  a  case  has 
ever   been   analyzed   and   registered;   it   is 
doubtful  whether  it  ever  can  be  registered. 
It  is  hardly  fair  to  bring  in  the  mathema- 
tician, since  he  deals  with  absolute  truth  (so 
far    as    mortality    can    conceive    absolute 
truth) ;  but  how  would  a  mathematician  feel 
if  he  were  suddenly  confronted  with  a  two- 
sided   triangle?     I    suppose   he   would   in- 
stantly   become    a    raging    madman;    and 
Lewis,  staring  wide-eyed  and  wild-eyed  at  a 
dark  and  spreading  tree  which  his  own  ex- 
perience informed  him  was  not  there,  felt 
for  an  instant  that  shock  which  should  af- 
front us  all  when  we  first  realize  the  intoler- 
[74] 


The  Terror 

able  antinomy  of  Achilles  and  the  Tortoise. 
Common  sense  tells  us  that  Achilles  will 
flash  past  the  tortoise  almost  with  the  speed 
of  the  lightning;  the  inflexible  truth  of 
mathematics  assures  us  that  till  the  earth 
boils  and  the  heavens  cease  to  endure  the 
Tortoise  must  still  be  in  advance ;  and  there- 
upon we  should,  in  common  decency,  go  mad. 
We  do  not  go  mad,  because,  by  special  grace, 
we  are  certified  that,  in  the  final  court  of 
appeal,  all  science  is  a  lie,  even  the  highest 
science  of  all;  and  so  we  simply  grin  at 
Achilles  and  the  Tortoise,  as  we  grin  at  Dar- 
win, deride  Huxley,  and  laugh  at  Herbert 
Spencer. 

Dr.  Lewis  did  not  grin.  He  glared  into 
the  dimness  of  the  night,  at  the  great 
spreading  tree  that  he  knew  could  not  be 
there.  And  as  he  gazed  he  saw  that  what 
at  first  appeared  the  dense  blackness  of  foli- 
age was  fretted  and  starred  with  wonderful 
appearances  of  lights  and  colors. 

Afterwards  he  said  to  me:  "I  remember 
[75] 


The  Terror 

thinking  to  myself:  'Look  here,  I  am  not  de- 
lirious; my  temperature  is  perfectly  normal. 
I  am  not  drunk ;  I  only  had  a  pint  of  Graves 
with  my  dinner,  over  three  hours  ago.  I 
have  not  eaten  any  poisonous  fungus ;  I  have 
not  taken  Anhelonium  Lewinii  experimen- 
tally. So,  now  then!  What  is  happen- 
ing?'  " 

The  night  had  gloomed  over;  clouds  ob- 
scured the  faint  moon  and  the  misty  stars. 
Lewis  rose,  with  some  kind  of  warning  and 
inhibiting  gesture  to  Remnant,  who,  he  was 
conscious  was  gaping  at  him  in  astonish- 
ment. He  walked  to  the  open  French  win- 
dow, and  took  a  pace  forward  on  to  the  path 
outside,  and  looked,  very  intently,  at  the 
dark  shape  of  the  tree,  down  below  the  slop- 
ing garden,  above  the  washing  of  the  waves. 
He  shaded  the  light  of  the  lamp  behind  him 
by  holding  his  hands  on  each  side  of  his 
eyes. 

The  mass  of  the  tree — the  tree  that 
couldn't  be  there — stood  out  against  the  sky, 
[76] 


The  Terror 

but  not  so  clearly,  now  that  the  clouds  had 
rolled  up.  Its  edges,  the  limits  of  its  leaf- 
age, were  not  so  distinct.  Lewis  thought 
that  he  could  detect  some  sort  of  quivering 
movement  in  it ;  though  the  air  was  at  a  dead 
calm.  It  was  a  night  on  which  one  might 
hold  up  a  lighted  match  and  watch  it  burn 
without  any  wavering  or  inclination  of  the 
flame. 

"You  know,"  said  Lewis,  "how  a  bit  of 
burnt  paper  will  sometimes  hang  over  the 
coals  before  it  goes  up  the  chimney,  and  lit- 
tle worms  of  fire  will  shoot  through  it.  It 
was  like  that,  if  you  should  be  standing  some 
distance  away.  Just  threads  and  hairs  of 
yellow  light  I  saw,  and  specks  and  sparks  of 
fire,  and  then  a  twinkling  of  a  ruby  no  bigger 
than  a  pin  point,  and  a  green  wandering  in 
the  black,  as  if  an  emerald  were  crawling, 
and  then  little  veins  of  deep  blue.  'Woe  is 
me !'  I  said  to  myself  in  Welsh,  'What  is  all 
this  color  and  burning?' 

"And,  then,  at  that  very  moment  there 
[77] 


The  Terror 

came  a  thundering  rap  at  the  door  of  the 
room  inside,  and  there  was  my  man  telling 
me  that  I  was  wanted  directly  up  at  the 
Garth,  as  old  Mr.  Trevor  Williams  had  been 
taken  very  bad.  I  knew  his  heart  was  not 
worth  much,  so  I  had  to  go  off  directly,  and 
leave  Remnant  to  make  what  he  could  of  it 
all." 


[78] 


CHAPTER  VI  Mr.  Remnant's 

ZRay 

DR.  LEWIS  was  kept  some  time  at 
the  Garth.  It  was  past  twelve 
when  he  got  back  to  his  house. 
He  went  quickly  to  the  room  that  over- 
looked the  garden  and  the  sea  and  threw 
open  the  French  window  and  peered  into  the 
darkness.  There,  dim  indeed  against  the 
dim  sky  but  unmistakable,  was  the  tall  pine 
with  its  sparse  branches,  high  above  the 
dense  growth  of  the  ilex  trees.  The  strange 
boughs  which  had  amazed  him  had  van- 
ished; there  was  no  appearance  now  of  col- 
ors or  of  fires. 

He  drew  his  chair  up  to  the  open  window 

and  sat  there  gazing  and  wondering  far  into 

the  night,  till  brightness  came  upon  the  sea 

and  sky,  and  the  forms  of  the  trees  in  the 

[79] 


The  Terror 

garden  grew  clear  and  evident.  He  went  up 
to  his  bed  at  last  filled  with  a  great  perplex- 
ity, still  asking  questions  to  which  there  was 
no  answer. 

The  doctor  did  not  say  anything  about 
the  strange  tree  to  Remnant.  When  they 
next  met,  Lewis  said  that  he  had  thought 
there  was  a  man  hiding  amongst  the  bushes 
— this  in  explanation  of  that  warning  ges- 
ture he  had  used,  and  of  his  going  out  into 
the  garden  and  staring  into  the  night.  He 
concealed  the  truth  because  he  dreaded  the 
Remnant  doctrine  that  would  undoubtedly 
be  produced;  indeed,  he  hoped  that  he  had 
heard  the  last  of  the  theory  of  the  Z  Ray. 
But  Remnant  firmly  reopened  this  subject. 

"We  were  interrupted  just  as  I  was  put- 
ting my  case  to  you,"  he  said.  "And  to  sum 
it  all  up,  it  amounts  to  this:  that  the  Huns 
have  made  one  of  the  great  leaps  of  science. 
They  are  sending  'suggestions'  (which 
amount  to  irresistible  commands)  over  here, 
and  the  persons  affected  are  seized  with  sui- 
[80] 


The  Terror 

cidal  or  homicidal  mania.  The  people  who 
were  killed  by  falling  over  the  cliffs  or  into 
the  quarry  probably  committed  suicide;  and 
so  with  the  man  and  boy  who  were  found  in 
the  bog.  As  to  the  Highway  case,  you  re- 
member that  Thomas  Evans  said  that  he 
stopped  and  talked  to  Williams  on  the  night 
of  the  murder.  In  my  opinion  Evans  was 
the  murderer.  He  came  under  the  influence 
of  the  Ray,  became  a  homicidal  maniac  in  an 
instant,  snatched  Williams's  spade  from  his 
hand  and  killed  him  and  the  others." 

"The  bodies  were  found  by  me  on  the 
road." 

"It  is  possible  that  the  first  impact  of  the 
Ray  produces  violent  nervous  excitement, 
which  would  manifest  itself  externally. 
Williams  might  have  called  to  his  wife  to 
come  and  see  what  was  the  matter  with 
Evans.  The  children  would  naturally  fol- 
low their  mother.  It  seems  to  me  simple. 
And  as  for  the  animals — the  horses,  dogs, 
and  so  forth,  they  as  I  say,  were  no  doubt 
[81] 


The  Terror 

panic-stricken  by  the  Ray,  and  hence  driven 
to  frenzy." 

"Why  should  Evans  have  murdered 
Williams  instead  of  Williams  murdering 
Evans  ?  Why  should  the  impact  of  the  Ray 
affect  one  and  not  the  other?" 

"Why  does  one  man  react  violently  to  a 
certain  drug,  while  it  makes  no  impression 
on  another  man  ?  Why  is  A  able  to  drink  a 
bottle  of  whisky  and  remain  sober,  while  B 
is  turned  into  something  very  like  a  lunatic 
after  he  has  drunk  three  glasess?" 

"It  is  a  question  of  idiosyncrasy,"  said  the 
doctor. 

"Is  idiosyncrasy  Greek  for  'I  don't 
know'?"  asked  Remnant. 

"Not  at  all,"  said  Lewis,  smiling  blandly. 
"I  mean  that  in  some  diatheses  whisky— 
as  you  have  mentioned  whisky — appears  not 
to  be  pathogenic,  or  at  all  events  not  imme- 
diately pathogenic.  In  other  cases,  as  you 
very  justly  observed,  there  seems  to  be  a 
very  marked  cachexia  associated  with  the 
[82] 


The  Terror 

exhibition  of  the  spirit  in  question,  even  in 
comparatively  small  doses." 

Under  this  cloud  of  professional  verbiage 
Lewis  escaped  from  the  Club  and  from 
Remnant.  He  did  not  want  to  hear  any 
more  about  that  Dreadful  Ray,  because  he 
felt  sure  that  the  Ray  was  all  nonsense. 
But  asking  himself  why  he  felt  this  certitude 
in  the  matter  he  had  to  confess  that  he  didn't 
know.  An  aeroplane,  he  reflected,  was  all 
nonsense  before  it  was  made;  and  he  re- 
membered talking  in  the  early  nineties  to  a 
friend  of  his  about  the  newly  discovered  X 
Rays.  The  friend  laughed  incredulously, 
evidently  didn't  believe  a  word  of  it,  till 
Lewis  told  him  that  there  was  an  article  on 
the  subject  in  the  current  number  of  the 
Saturday  Review;  whereupon  the  unbeliever 
said,  "Oh,  is  that  so?  Oh,  really.  I  see" 
and  was  converted  on  the  X  Ray  faith  on 
the  spot.  Lewis,  remembering  this  talk, 
marveled  at  the  strange  processes  of  the 
human  mind,  its  illogical  and  yet  all-com- 
[83] 


The  Terror 

pelling  ergos,  and  wondered  whether  he  him- 
self was  only  waiting  for  an  article  on  the 
Z  Ray  in  the  Saturday  Review  to  become  a 
devout  believer  in  the  doctrine  of  Remnant. 
But  he  wondered  with  far  more  fervor  as 
to  the  extraordinary  thing  he  had  seen  in 
his  own  garden  with  his  own  eyes.  The  tree 
that  changed  all  its  shape  for  an  hour  or  two 
of  the  night,  the  growth  of  strange  boughs, 
the  apparition  of  secret  fires  among  them, 
the  sparkling  of  emerald  and  ruby  lights: 
how  could  one  fail  to  be  afraid  with  great 
amazement  at  the  thought  of  such  a  mys- 
tery? 

Dr.  Lewis's  thoughts  were  distracted 
from  the  incredible  adventure  of  the  tree 
by  the  visit  of  his  sister  and  her  husband. 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  Merritt  lived  in  a  well-known 
manufacturing  town  of  the  Midlands,  which 
was  now,  of  course,  a  center  of  munition 
work.  On  the  day  of  their  arrival  at  Forth, 
Mrs.  Merritt,  who  was  tired  after  the  long, 
[84] 


The  Terror 

hot  journey,  went  to  bed  early,  and  Merritt 
and  Lewis  went  into  the  room  by  the  gar- 
den for  their  talk  and  tobacco.  They  spoke 
of  the  year  that  had  passed  since  their  last 
meeting,  of  the  weary  dragging  of  the  war, 
of  friends  that  had  perished  in  it,  of  the 
hopelessness  of  an  early  ending  of  all  this 
misery.  Lewis  said  nothing  of  the  terror 
that  was  on  the  land.  One  does  not  greet  a 
tired  man  who  is  come  to  a  quiet,  sunny 
place  for  relief  from  black  smoke  and  work 
and  worry  with  a  tale  of  horror.  Indeed, 
the  doctor  saw  that  his  brother-in-law  looked 
far  from  well.  And  he  seemed  "jumpy"; 
there  was  an  occasional  twitch  of  his  mouth 
that  Lewis  did  not  like  at  all. 

"Well,"  said  the  doctor,  after  an  interval 
of  silence  and  port  wine,  "I  am  glad  to  see 
you  here  again.  Forth  always  suits  you.  I 
don't  think  you're  looking  quite  up  to  your 
usual  form.  But  three  weeks  of  Meirion 
air  will  do  wonders." 

"Well,  I  hope  it  will,"  said  the  other.  "I 
[85] 


The  Terror 

am  not  up  to  the  mark.     Things  are  not  go- 
ing well  at  Midlingham." 

"Business  is  all  right,  isn't  it?" 
"Yes.     Business  is  all  right.     But  there 
are  other  things  that  are  all  wrong.     We  are 
living  under  a  reign  of  terror.     It  comes  to 
that." 

"What  on  earth  do  you  mean?" 
"Well,  I  suppose  I  may  tell  you  what  I 
know.     It's  not  much.     I  didn't  dare  write 
it.     But  do  you  know  that  at  every  one  of 
the  munition  works  in  Midlingham  and  all 
about  it  there's  a  guard  of  soldiers  with 
drawn  bayonets  and  loaded  rifles  day  and 
night?     Men  with   bombs,   too.     And  ma- 
chine-guns at  the  big  factories." 
"German  spies?" 

"You  don't  want  Lewis  guns  to  fight  spies 
with.  Nor  bombs.  Nor  a  platoon  of  men. 
I  woke  up  last  night.  It  was  the  machine- 
gun  at  Benington's  Army  Motor  Works. 
Firing  like  fury.  And  then  bang!  bang! 
bang!  That  was  the  hand  bombs." 
[86] 


The  Terror 

"But  what  against?" 

"Nobody  knows." 

"Nobody  knows  what  is  happening," 
Merritt  repeated,  and  he  went  on  to  de- 
scribe the  bewilderment  and  terror  that 
hung  like  a  cloud  over  the  great  industrial 
city  in  the  Midlands,  how  the  feeling  of 
concealment,  of  some  intolerable  secret  dan- 
ger that  must  not  be  named,  was  worst  of 
all. 

"A  young  fellow  I  know,"  he  said,  "was 
on  short  leave  the  other  day  from  the  front, 
and  he  spent  it  with  his  people  at  Belmont 
— that's  about  four  miles  out  of  Midling- 
ham,  you  know.  'Thank  God,'  he  said  to 
me,  'I  am  going  back  to-morrow.  It's  no 
good  saying  that  the  Wipers  salient  is  nice, 
because  it  isn't.  But  it's  a  damned  sight 
better  than  this.  At  the  front  you  know 
what  you're  up  against  anyhow.'  At  Mid- 
lingham  everybody  has  the  feeling  that  we're 
up  against  something  awful  and  we  don't 
know  what;  it's  that  that  makes  people  in- 
[87] 


The  Terror 
clined  to  whisper.     There's   terror   in   the 


air." 


Merritt  made  a  sort  of  picture  of  the  great 
town  cowering  in  its  fear  of  an  unknown 
danger. 

"People  are  afraid  to  go  about  alone  at 
nights  in  the  outskirts.  They  make  up  par- 
ties at  the  stations  to  go  home  together  if 
it's  anything  like  dark,  or  if  there  are  any 
lonely  bits  on  their  way." 

"But  why?  I  don't  understand.  What 
are  they  afraid  of  ?" 

"Well,  I  told  you  about  my  being  awak- 
ened up  the  other  night  with  the  machine- 
guns  at  the  motor  works  rattling  away,  and 
the  bombs  exploding  and  making  the  most 
terrible  noise.  That  sort  of  thing  alarms 
one,  you  know.  It's  only  natural." 

"Indeed,  it  must  be  very  terrifying.  You 
mean,  then,  there  is  a  general  nervousness 
about,  a  vague  sort  of  apprehension  that 
makes  people  inclined  to  herd  together?" 

"There's  that,  and  there's  more.  People 
[88] 


The  Terror 

have  gone  out  that  have  never  come  back. 
There  were  a  couple  of  men  in  the  train  to 
Holme,  arguing  about  the  quickest  way  to 
get  to  Northend,  a  sort  of  outlying  part  of 
Holme  where  they  both  lived.  They  ar- 
gued all  the  way  out  of  Midlingham,  one 
saying  that  the  high  road  was  the  quickest 
though  it  was  the  longest  way.  'It's  the 
quickest  going  because  it's  the  cleanest  go- 
ing/ he  said. 

"The  other  chap  fancied  a  short  cut  across 
the  fields,  by  the  canal.  'It's  half  the  dis- 
tance,' he  kept  on.  'Yes,  if  you  don't  lose 
your  way/  said  the  other.  Well,  it  appears 
they  put  an  even  half-crown  on  it,  and  each 
was  to  try  his  own  way  when  they  got  out 
of  the  train.  It  was  arranged  that  they 
were  to  meet  at  the  'Wagon'  in  Northend. 
'I  shall  be  at  the  "Wagon"  first/  said  the 
man  who  believed  in  the  short  cut,  and  with 
that  he  climbed  over  the  stile  and  made  off 
across  the  fields.  It  wasn't  late  enough  to 
be  really  dark,  and  a  lot  of  them  thought  he 
[89] 


The  Terror 

might  win  the  stakes.  But  he  never  turned 
up  at  the  Wagon — or  anywhere  else  for  the 
matter  of  that." 

"What  happened  to  him?" 

"He  was  found  lying  on  his  back  in  the 
middle  of  a  field — some  way  from  the  path. 
He  was  dead.  The  doctors  said  he'd  been 
suffocated.  Nobody  knows  how.  Then 
there  have  been  other  cases.  We  whisper 
about  them  at  Midlingham,  but  we're  afraid 
to  speak  out." 

Lewis  was  ruminating  all  this  profoundly. 
Terror  in  Meirion  and  terror  far  away  in 
the  heart  of  England;  but  at  Midling- 
ham, so  far  as  he  could  gather  from  these 
stories  of  soldiers  on  guard,  of  crackling 
machine-guns,  it  was  a  case  of  an  organized 
attack  on  the  munitioning  of  the  army.  He 
felt  that  he  did  not  know  enough  to  warrant 
his  deciding  that  the  terror  of  Meirion  and 
of  Stratfordshire  were  one. 

Then  Merritt  began  again : 

"There's  a  queer  story  going  about,  when 
[90] 


The  Terror 

the  door's  shut  and  the  curtain's  drawn, 
that  is,  as  to  a  place  right  out  in  the  country 
over  the  other  side  of  Midlingham ;  on  the 
opposite  side  to  Dunwich.  They've  built 
one  of  the  new  factories  out  there,  a  great 
red  brick  town  of  sheds  they  tell  me  it  is, 
with  a  tremendous  chimney.  It's  not  been 
finished  more  than  a  month  or  six  weeks. 
They  plumped  it  down  right  in  the  middle 
of  the  fields,  by  the  line,  and  they're  build- 
ing huts  for  the  workers  as  fast  as  they  can 
but  up  to  the  present  the  men  are  billeted 
all  about,  up  and  down  the  line. 

"About  two  hundred  yards  from  this 
place  there's  an  old  footpath,  leading  from 
the  station  and  the  main  road  up  to  a  small 
hamlet  on  the  hillside.  Part  of  the  way  this 
path  goes  by  a  pretty  large  wood,  most  of  it 
thick  undergrowth.  I  should  think  there 
must  be  twenty  acres  of  wood,  more  or  less. 
As  it  happens,  I  used  this  path  once  long  ago ; 
and  I  can  tell  you  it's  a  black  place  of  nights. 

"A  man  had  to  go  this  way  one  night. 
[90 


The  Terror 

He  got  along  all  right  till  he  came  to  the 
wood.  And  then  he  said  his  heart  dropped 
out  of  his  body.  It  was  awful  to  hear  the 
noises  in  that  wood.  Thousands  of  men 
were  in  it,  he  swears  that.  It  was  full  of 
rustling,  and  pattering  of  feet  trying  to  go 
dainty,  and  the  crack  of  dead  boughs  lying 
on  the  ground  as  some  one  trod  on  them, 
and  swishing  of  the  grass,  and  some  sort  of 
chattering  speech  going  on,  that  sounded, 
so  he  said,  as  if  the  dead  sat  in  their  bones 
and  talked!  He  ran  for  his  life,  anyhow; 
across  fields,  over  hedges,  through  brooks. 
He  must  have  run,  by  his  tale,  ten  miles  out 
of  his  way  before  he  got  home  to  his  wife, 
and  beat  at  the  door,  and  broke  in,  and 
bolted  it  behind  him." 

"There    is    something    rather    alarming 
about  any  wood  at  night,"  said  Dr.  Lewis. 

Merritt  shrugged  his  shoulders. 

"People    say    that    the    Germans    have 
landed,  and  that  they  are  hiding  in  under- 
ground places  all  over  the  country." 
[92] 


CHAPTER  VII  The  Case  of  the 

Hidden  Germans 

LEWIS  gasped  for  a  moment,  silent 
in  contemplation  of  the  magnifi- 
cence of  rumor.     The  Germans  al- 
ready landed,  hiding  underground,  striking 
by  night,  secretly,  terribly,  at  the  power  of 
England!     Here   was   a   conception   which 
made  the  myth  of  'The  Russians"  a  paltry 
fable ;  before  which  the  Legend  of  Mons  was 
an  ineffectual  thing. 

It  was  monstrous.     And  yet — 
He  looked  steadily  at  Merritt;  a  square- 
headed,  black-haired,  solid  sort  of  man.     He 
had  symptoms  of  nerves  about  him  for  the 
moment,  certainly,  but  one  could  not  wonder 
at  that,  whether  the  tales  he  told  were  true, 
or  whether  he  merely  believed  them  to  be 
true.     Lewis  had  known  his  brother-in-law 
[931 


The  Terror 

for  twenty  years  or  more,  and  had  always 
found  him  a  sure  man  in  his  own  small 
world.  "But  then,"  said  the  doctor  to  him- 
self, "those  men,  if  they  once  get  out  of  the 
ring  of  that  little  world  of  theirs,  they  are 
lost.  Those  are  the  men  that  believed  in 
Madame  Blavatsky." 

"Well,"  he  said,  "what  do  you  think  your- 
self? The  Germans  landed  and  hiding 
somewhere  about  the  country :  there's  some- 
thing extravagant  in  the  notion,  isn't 
there?" 

"I  don't  know  what  to  think.  You  can't 
get  over  the  facts.  There  are  the  soldiers 
with  their  rifles  and  their  guns  at  the  works 
all  over  Stratfordshire,  and  those  guns  go 
off.  I  told  you  I'd  heard  them.  Then  who 
are  the  soldiers  shooting  at?  That's  what 
we  ask  ourselves  at  Midlingham." 

"Quite  so;  I  quite  understand.  It's  an 
extraordinary  state  of  things." 

"It's  more  than  extraordinary;  it's  an 
awful  state  of  things.  It's  terror  in  the 
[94] 


The  Terror 

dark,  and  there's  nothing  worse  than  that. 
As  that  young  fellow  I  was  telling  you  about 
said,  'At  the  front  you  do  know  what  you're 
up  against.' ' 

"And  people  really  believe  that  a  number 
of  Germans  have  somehow  got  over  to 
England  and  have  hid  themselves  under- 
ground ?" 

"People  say  they've  got  a  new  kind  of 
poison-gas.  Some  think  that  they  dig  un- 
derground places  and  make  the  gas  there, 
and  lead  it  by  secret  pipes  into  the  shops; 
others  say  that  they  throw  gas  bombs  into 
the  factories.  It  must  be  worse  than  any- 
thing they've  used  in  France,  from  what  the 
authorities  say." 

'The  authorities?  Do  they  admit  that 
there  are  Germans  in  hiding  about  Midling- 
ham?" 

"No.     They  call  it  'explosions.'     But  we 

know  it  isn't  explosions.     We  know  in  the 

Midlands  what  an  explosion  sounds  like  and 

looks  like.     And  we  know  that  the  people 

[95] 


The  Terror 

killed  in  these  'explosions'  are  put  into  their 
coffins  in  the  works.  Their  own  relations 
are  not  allowed  to  see  them." 

"And  so  you  believe  in  the  German 
theory?" 

"If  I  do,  it's  because  one  must  believe  in 
something.  Some  say  they've  seen  the  gas. 
I  heard  that  a  man  living  in  Dunwich  saw 
it  one  night  like  a  black  cloud  with  sparks 
of  fire  in  it  floating  over  the  tops  of  the 
trees  by  Dunwich  Common." 

The  light  of  an  ineffable  amazement  came 
into  Lewis's  eyes.  The  night  of  Remnant's 
visit,  the  trembling  vibration  of  the  air,  the 
dark  tree  that  had  grown  in  his  garden  since 
the  setting  of  the  sun,  the  strange  leafage 
that  was  starred  with  burning,  with  emerald 
and  ruby  fires,  and  all  vanished  away  when 
he  returned  from  his  visit  to  the  Garth ;  and 
such  a  leafage  had  appeared  as  a  burning 
cloud  far  in  the  heart  of  England :  what  in- 
tolerable mystery,  what  tremendous  doom 
was  signified  in  this?  But  one  thing  was 
[96] 


The  Terror 

clear  and  certain :  that  the  terror  of  Meirion 
was  also  the  terror  of  the  Midlands. 

Lewis  made  up  his  mind  most  firmly  that 
if  possible  all  this  should  be  kept  from  his 
brother-in-law.  Merritt  had  come  to  Forth 
as  to  a  city  of  refuge  from  the  horrors  of 
Midlingham;  if  it  could  be  managed  he 
should  be  spared  the  knowledge  that  the 
cloud  of  terror  had  gone  before  him  and 
hung  black  over  the  western  land.  Lewis 
passed  the  port  and  said  in  an  even  voice : 

"Very  strange,  indeed ;  a  black  cloud  with 
sparks  of  fire?" 

"I  can't  answer  for  it,  you  know ;  it's  only 


a  rumor." 


"Just  so ;  and  you  think  or  you're  inclined 
to  think  that  this  and  all  the  rest  you've  told 
me  is  to  be  put  down  to  the  hidden  Ger- 
mans?" 

"As  I  say;  because  one  must  think  some- 
thing. 

"I  quite  see  your  point.  No  doubt,  if 
it's  true,  it's  the  most  awful  blow  that  has 
[97] 


The  Terror 

ever  been  dealt  at  any  nation  in  the  whole 
history  of  man.  The  enemy  established  in 
our  vitals!  But  is  it  possible,  after  all? 
How  could  it  have  been  worked?" 

Merritt  told  Lewis  how  it  had  been 
worked,  or  rather,  how  people  said  it  had 
been  worked.  The  idea,  he  said,  was  that 
this  was  a  part,  and  a  most  important  part, 
of  the  great  German  plot  to  destroy  England 
and  the  British  Empire. 

The  scheme  had  been  prepared  years  ago, 
some  thought  soon  after  the  Franco-Prus- 
sian War.  Moltke  had  seen  that  the  in- 
vasion of  England  (in  the  ordinary  sense 
of  the  term  invasion)  presented  very  great 
difficulties.  The  matter  was  constantly  in 
discussion  in  the  inner  military  and  high 
political  circles,  and  the  general  trend  of 
opinion  in  these  quarters  was  that  at  the 
best,  the  invasion  of  England  would  involve 
Germany  in  the  gravest  difficulties,  and 
leave  France  in  the  position  of  the  tertius 
gaudens.  This  was  the  state  of  affairs 
[98] 


The  Terror 

when  a  very  high  Prussian  personage  was 
approached  by  the  Swedish  professor, 
Huvelius. 

Thus  Merritt,  and  here  I  would  say  in 
parenthesis  that  this  Huvelius  was  by  all  ac- 
counts an  extraordinary  man.  Considered 
personally  and  apart  from  his  writings  he 
would  appear  to  have  been  a  most  amiable 
individual.  He  was  richer  than  the  gen- 
erality of  Swedes,  certainly  far  richer  than 
the  average  university  professor  in  Sweden. 
But  his  shabby,  green  frock-coat,  and  his 
battered,  furry  hat  were  notorious  in  the 
university  town  where  he  lived.  No  one 
laughed,  because  it  was  well  known  that 
Professor  Huvelius  spent  every  penny  of 
his  private  means  and  a  large  portion  of 
his  official  stipend  on  works  of  kindness  and 
charity.  He  hid  his  head  in  a  garret,  some 
one  said,  in  order  that  others  might  be  able 
to  swell  on  the  first  floor.  It  was  told  of 
him  that  he  restricted  himself  to  a  diet  of 
dry  bread  and  coffee  for  a  month  in  order 
[99] 


The  Terror 

that  a  poor  woman  of  the  streets,  dying  of 
consumption,  might  enjoy  luxuries  in  hos- 
pital. 

And  this  was  the  man  who  wrote  the 
treatise  "De  Facinore  Humano";  to  prove 
the  infinite  corruption  of  the  human  race. 

Oddly  enough,  Professor  Huvelius  wrote 
the  most  cynical  book  in  the  world — Hobbes 
preaches  rosy  sentimentalism  in  comparison 
— with  the  very  highest  motives.  He  held 
that  a  very  large  part  of  human  misery, 
misadventure,  and  sorrow  was  due  to  the 
false  convention  that  the  heart  of  man  was 
naturally  and  in  the  main  well  disposed  and 
kindly,  if  not  exactly  righteous.  "Murder- 
ers, thieves,  assassins,  violators,  and  all  the 
host  of  the  abominable,"  he  says  in  one 
passage,  "are  created  by  the  false  pretense 
and  foolish  credence  of  human  virtue.  A 
lion  in  a  cage  is  a  fierce  beast,  indeed;  but 
what  will  he  be  if  we  declare  him  to  be  a 
lamb  and  open  the  doors  of  his  den?  Who 
will  be  guilty  of  the  deaths  of  the  men, 
[i  oo] 


The  Terror 

women  and  children  whom  he  will  surely 
devour,  save  those  who  unlocked  the  cage?" 
And  he  goes  on  to  show  that  kings  and  the 
rulers  of  the  peoples  could  decrease  the  sum 
of  human  misery  to  a  vast  extent  by  acting 
on  the  doctrine  of  human  wickedness. 
"War,"  he  declares,  "which  is  one  of  the 
worst  of  evils,  will  always  continue  to  exist. 
But  a  wise  king  will  desire  a  brief  war  rather 
than  a  lengthy  one,  a  short  evil  rather  than 
a  long  evil.  And  this  not  from  the  benign- 
ity of  his  heart  towards  his  enemies,  for  we 
have  seen  that  the  human  heart  is  naturally 
malignant,  but  because  he  desires  to  con- 
quer, and  to  conquer  easily,  without  a  great 
expenditure  of  men  or  of  treasure,  knowing 
that  if  he  can  accomplish  this  feat  his  peo- 
ple will  love  him  and  his  crown  will  be  se- 
cure. So  he  will  wage  brief  victorious  wars, 
and  not  only  spare  his  own  nation,  but  the 
nation  of  the  enemy,  since  in  a  short  war  the 
loss  is  less  on  both  sides  than  in  a  long  war. 
And  so  from  evil  will  come  good." 
[101] 


The  Terror 

And  how,  asks  Huvelius,  are  such  wars 
to  be  waged?  The  wise  prince,  he  replies, 
will  begin  by  assuming  the  enemy  to  be 
infinitely  corruptible  and  infinitely  stupid, 
since  stupidity  and  corruption  are  the  chief 
characteristics  of  man.  So  the  prince  will 
make  himself  friends  in  the  very  councils  of 
his  enemy,  and  also  amongst  the  populace, 
bribing  the  wealthy  by  proffering  to  them 
the  opportunity  of  still  greater  wealth,  and 
winning  the  poor  by  swelling  words.  "For, 
contrary  to  the  common  opinion,  it  is  the 
wealthy  who  are  greedy  of  wealth ;  while  the 
populace  are  to  be  gained  by  talking  to  them 
about  liberty,  their  unknown  god,  And  so 
much  are  they  enchanted  by  the  words  lib- 
erty, freedom,  and  such  like,  that  the  wise 
can  go  to  the  poor,  rob  them  of  what  little 
they  have,  dismiss  them  with  a  hearty  kick, 
and  win  their  hearts  and  their  votes  for 
ever,  if  only  they  will  assure  them  that  the 
treatment  which  they  have  received  is  called 
liberty." 

[102] 


The  Terror 

Guided  by  these  principles,  says  Huve- 
lius,  the  wise  prince  will  entrench  himself 
in  the  country  that  he  desires  to  conquer; 
"nay,  with  but  little  trouble,  he  may  ac- 
tually and  literally  throw  his  garrisons  into 
the  heart  of  the  enemy  country  before  war 
has  begun." 

This  is  a  long  and  tiresome  parenthesis; 
but  it  is  necessary  as  explaining  the  long 
tale  which  Merritt  told  his  brother-in-law, 
he  having  received  it  from  some  magnate 
of  the  Midlands,  who  had  traveled  in  Ger- 
many. It  is  probable  that  the  story  was 
suggested  in  the  first  place  by  the  passage 
from  Huvelius  which  I  have  just  quoted. 

Merritt  knew  nothing  of  the  real  Hu- 
velius, who  was  all  but  a  saint;  he  thought 
of  the  Swedish  professor  as  a  monster  of 
iniquity,  "worse,"  as  he  said,  "than  Neech" 
— meaning,  no  doubt,  Nietzsche. 

So  he  told  the  story  of  how  Huvelius  had 
sold  his  plan  to  the  Germans;  a  plan  for 
[103] 


The  Terror 

filling  England  with  German  soldiers. 
Land  was  to  be  bought  in  certain  suitable 
and  well-considered  places,  Englishmen 
were  to  be  bought  as  the  apparent  owners  of 
such  land,  and  secret  excavations  were  to 
be  made,  till  the  country  was  literally  un- 
dermined. A  subterranean  Germany,  in 
fact,  was  to  be  dug  under  selected  districts 
of  England;  there  were  to  be  great  caverns, 
underground  cities,  well  drained,  well  ven- 
tilated, supplied  with  water,  and  in  these 
places  vast  stores  both  of  food  and  of  muni- 
tions were  to  be  accumulated,  year  after 
year,  till  "the  Day"  dawned.  And  then, 
warned  in  time,  the  secret  garrison  would 
leave  shops,  hotels,  offices,  villas,  and  van- 
ish underground,  ready  to  begin  their  work 
of  bleeding  England  at  the  heart. 

"That's  what  Henson  told  me,"  said  Mer- 
ritt  at  the  end  of  his  long  story.  "Henson, 
head  of  the  Buckley  Iron  and  Steel  Syndi- 
cate. He  has  been  a  lot  in  Germany." 

"Well,"  said  Lewis,  "of  course,  it  may  be 
[104] 


The  Terror 

so.  If  it  is  so,  it  is  terrible  beyond  words." 
Indeed,  he  found  something  horribly 
plausible  in  the  story.  It  was  an  extraor- 
dinary plan,  of  course;  an  unheard  of 
scheme;  but  it  did  not  seem  impossible.  It 
was  the  Trojan  Horse  on  a  gigantic  scale; 
indeed,  he  reflected,  the  story  of  the  horse 
with  the  warriors  concealed  within  it  which 
was  dragged  into  the  heart  of  Troy  by  the 
deluded  Trojans  themselves  might  be  taken 
as  a  prophetic  parable  of  what  had  happened 
to  England — if  Henson's  theory  were  well 
founded.  And  this  theory  certainly  squared 
with  what  one  had  heard  of  German  prepa- 
rations in  Belgium  and  in  France:  emplace- 
ments for  guns  ready  for  the  invader,  Ger- 
man manufactories  which  were  really  Ger- 
man forts  on  Belgian  soil,  the  caverns  by  the 
Aisne  made  ready  for  the  cannon;  indeed, 
Lewis  thought  he  remembered  something 
about  suspicious  concrete  tennis-courts  on 
the  heights  commanding  London.  But  a 
German  army  hidden  under  English  ground ! 
[105] 


The  Terror 

It  was  a  thought  to  chill  the  stoutest  heart. 

And  it  seemed  from  that  wonder  of  the 
burning  tree,  that  the  enemy  mysteriously 
and  terribly  present  at  Midlingham,  was 
present  also  in  Meirion.  Lewis,  thinking 
of  the  country  as  he  knew  it,  of  its  wild 
and  desolate  hillsides,  its  deep  woods,  its 
wastes  and  solitary  places,  could  not  but 
confess  that  no  more  fit  region  could  be 
found  for  the  deadly  enterprise  of  secret 
men.  Yet,  he  thought  again,  there  was 
but  little  harm  to  be  done  in  Meirion  to  the 
armies  of  England  or  to  their  munitionment. 
They  were  working  for  panic  terror?  Pos- 
sibly that  might  be  so;  but  the  camp  under 
the  Highway?  That  should  be  their  first 
object,  and  no  harm  had  been  done  there. 

Lewis  did  not  know  that  since  the  panic 
of  the  horses  men  had  died  terribly  in  that 
camp ;  that  it  was  now  a  fortified  place,  with 
a  deep,  broad  trench,  a  thick  tangle  of  sav- 
age barbed  wire  about  it,  and  a  machine-gun 
planted  at  each  corner. 
[106] 


CHAPTER  VIII  Whatf  Mr. 

Merritt  Found 

MR.  MERRITT  began  to  pick  up 
his  health  and  spirits  a  good 
deal.  For  the  first  morning  or 
two  of  his  stay  at  the  doctor's  he  contented 
himself  with  a  very  comfortable  deck  chair 
close  to  the  house,  where  he  sat  under  the 
shade  of  an  old  mulberry  tree  beside  his  wife 
and  watched  the  bright  sunshine  on  the  green 
lawns,  on  the  creamy  crests  of  the  waves, 
on  the  headlands  of  that  glorious  coast, 
purple  even  from  afar  with  the  imperial 
glow  of  the  heather,  on  the  white  farm- 
houses gleaming  in  the  sunlight,  high  over 
the  sea,  far  from  any  turmoil,  from  any 
troubling  of  men. 

The  sun  was  hot,  but  the  wind  breathed 
all  the  while  gently,  incessantly,  from  the 
[107] 


The  Terror 

east,  and  Merritt,  who  had  come  to  this  quiet 
place,  not  only  from  dismay,  but  from  the 
stifling  and  oily  airs  of  the  smoky  Midland 
town,  said  that  that  east  wind,  pure  and 
clear  and  like  well  water  from  the  rock,  was 
new  life  to  him.  He  ate  a  capital  dinner 
at  the  end  of  his  first  day  at  Forth  and  took 
rosy  views.  As  to  what  they  had  been  talk- 
ing about  the  night  before,  he  said  to  Lewis, 
no  doubt  there  must  be  trouble  of  some  sort, 
and  perhaps  bad  trouble;  still,  Kitchener 
would  soon  put  it  all  right. 

So  things  went  on  very  well.  Merritt 
began  to  stroll  about  the  garden,  which  was 
full  of  the  comfortable  spaces,  groves,  and 
surprises  that  only  country  gardens  know. 
To  the  right  of  one  of  the  terraces  he  found 
an  arbor  or  summer-house  covered  with 
white  roses,  and  he  was  as  pleased  as  if  he 
had  discovered  the  Pole.  He  spent  a  whole 
day  there,  smoking  and  lounging  and  read- 
ing a  rubbishy  sensational  story,  and  de- 
clared that  the  Devonshire  roses  had  taken 
[108] 


The  Terror 

many  years  off  his  age.  Then  on  the  other 
side  of  the  garden  there  was  a  filbert  grove 
that  he  had  never  explored  on  any  of  his 
former  visits;  and  again  there  was  a  find. 
Deep  in  the  shadow  of  the  filberts  was  a 
bubbling  well,  issuing  from  rocks,  and  all 
manner  of  green,  dewy  ferns  growing  about 
it  and  above  it,  and  an  angelica  springing 
beside  it.  Merritt  knelt  on  his  knees,  and 
hollowed  his  hand  and  drank  the  well  water. 
He  said  (over  his  port)  that  night  that  if 
all  water  were  like  the  water  of  the  filbert 
well  the  world  would  turn  to  teetotalism. 
It  takes  a  townsman  to  relish  the  manifold 
and  exquisite  joys  of  the  country. 

It  was  not  till  he  began  to  venture  abroad 
that  Merritt  found  that  something  was  lack- 
ing of  the  old  rich  peace  that  used  to  dwell 
in  Meirion.  He  had  a  favorite  walk  which 
he  never  neglected,  year  after  year.  This 
walk  led  along  the  cliffs  towards  Meiros, 
and  then  one  could  turn  inland  and  return 
to  Forth  by  deep  winding  lanes  that  went 
[109] 


The  Terror 

over  the  Allt.  So  Merritt  set  out  early  one 
morning  and  got  as  far  as  a  sentry-box  at 
the  foot  of  the  path  that  led  up  to  the  cliff. 
There  was  a  sentry  pacing  up  and  down  in 
front  of  the  box,  and  he  called  on  Merritt 
to  produce  his  pass,  or  to  turn  back  to  the 
main  road.  Merritt  was  a  good  deal  put 
out,  and  asked  the  doctor  about  this  strict 
guard.  And  the  doctor  was  surprised. 

"I  didn't  know  they  had  put  their  bar  up 
there,"  he  said.  "I  suppose  it's  wise.  We 
are  certainly  in  the  far  West  here ;  still,  the 
Germans  might  slip  round  and  raid  us  and 
do  a  lot  of  damage  just  because  Meirion  is 
the  last  place  we  should  expect  them  to  go 
for." 

"But  there  are  no  fortifications,  surely,  on 
the  cliff?" 

"Oh,  no ;  I  never  heard  of  anything  of  the 
kind  there." 

"Well,  what's  the  point  of  forbidding  the 
public  to  go  on  the  cliff,  then?  I  can  quite 
understand  putting  a  sentry  on  the  top  to 
[no] 


The  Terror 

keep  a  look-out  for  the  enemy.  What  I 
don't  understand  is  a  sentry  at  the  bottom 
who  can't  keep  a  look-out  for  anything,  as 
he  can't  see  the  sea.  And  why  warn  the 
public  off  the  cliffs?  I  couldn't  facilitate  a 
German  landing  by  standing  on  Pengareg, 
even  if  I  wanted  to." 

"It  is  curious,"  the  doctor  agreed. 
"Some  military  reasons,  I  suppose." 

He  let  the  matter  drop,  perhaps  because 
the  matter  did  not  affect  him.  People  who 
live  in  the  country  all  the  year  round,  coun- 
try doctors  certainly,  are  little  given  to  desul- 
tory walking  in  search  of  the  picturesque. 

Lewis  had  no  suspicion  that  sentries 
whose  object  was  equally  obscure  were  being 
dotted  all  over  the  country.  There  was  a 
sentry,  for  example,  by  the  quarry  at  Llanfi- 
hangel,  where  the  dead  woman  and  the  dead 
sheep  had  been  found  some  weeks  before. 
The  path  by  the  quarry  was  used  a  good 
deal,  and  its  closing  would  have  inconven- 
ienced the  people  of  the  neighborhood  very 
[in] 


The  Terror 

considerably.  But  the  sentry  had  his  box 
by  the  side  of  the  track  and  had  his  orders 
to  keep  everybody  strictly  to  the  path,  as  if 
the  quarry  were  a  secret  fort. 

It  was  not  known  till  a  month  or  two  ago 
that  one  of  these  sentries  was  himself  a 
victim  of  the  terror.  The  men  on  duty  at 
this  place  were  given  certain  very  strict  or- 
ders, which  from  the  nature  of  the  case, 
must  have  seemed  to  them  unreasonable. 
For  old  soldiers,  orders  are  orders ;  but  here 
was  a  young  bank  clerk,  scarcely  in  training 
for  a  couple  of  months,  who  had  not  begun 
to  appreciate  the  necessity  of  hard,  literal 
obedience  to  an  order  which  seemed  to  him 
meaningless.  He  found  himself  on  a  re- 
mote and  lonely  hillside,  he  had  not  the  faint- 
est notion  that  his  every  movement  was 
watched;  and  he  disobeyed  a  certain  instruc- 
tion that  had  been  given  him.  The  post 
was  found  deserted  by  the  relief ;  the  sentry's 
dead  body  was  found  at  the  bottom  of  the 
quarry. 

[112] 


The  Terror 

This  by  the  way;  but  Mr.  Merritt  dis- 
covered again  and  again  that  things  hap- 
pened to  hamper  his  walks  and  his  wander- 
ings. Two  or  three  miles  from  Forth  there 
is  a  great  marsh  made  by  the  Afon  river 
before  it  falls  into  the  sea,  and  here  Merritt 
had  been  accustomed  to  botanize  mildly. 
He  had  learned  pretty  accurately  the  cause- 
ways of  solid  ground  that  lead  through  the 
sea  of  swamp  and  ooze  and  soft  yielding  soil, 
and  he  set  out  one  hot  afternoon  determined 
to  make  a  thorough  exploration  of  the 
marsh,  and  this  time  to  find  that  rare  Bog 
Bean,  that  he  felt  sure,  must  grow  some- 
where in  its  wide  extent. 

He  got  into  the  by-road  that  skirts  the 
marsh,  and  to  the  gate  which  he  had  always 
used  for  entrance. 

There  was  the  scene  as  he  had  known  it 
always,  the  rich  growth  of  reeds  and  flags 
and  rushes,  the  mild  black  cattle  grazing 
on  the  "islands"  of  firm  turf,  the  scented 
procession  of  the  meadowsweet,  the  royal 
[113] 


The  Terror 

glory  of  the  loosestrife,  flaming  pennons, 
crimson  and  golden,  of  the  giant  dock. 

But  they  were  bringing  out  a  dead  man's 
body  through  the  gate. 

A  laboring  man  was  holding  open  the 
gate  on  the  marsh.  Merritt,  horrified,  spoke 
to  him  and  asked  who  it  was,  and  how  it 
had  happened. 

"They  do  say  he  was  a  visitor  at  Forth. 
Somehow  he  has  been  drowned  in  the  marsh, 
whatever." 

"But  it's  perfectly  safe.  I've  been  all 
over  it  a  dozen  times." 

"Well,  indeed,  we  did  always  think  so. 
If  you  did  slip  by  accident,  like,  and  fall  into 
the  water,  it  was  not  so  deep;  it  was  easy 
enough  to  climb  out  again.  And  this  gentle- 
man was  quite  young,  to  look  at  him,  poor 
man;  and  he  has  come  to  Meirion  for  his 
pleasure  and  holiday  and  found  his  death 
in  it!" 

"Did  he  do  it  on  purpose?     Is  it  suicide?" 

"They  say  he  had  no  reasons  to  do  that." 


The  Terror 

Here  the  sergeant  of  police  in  charge  of 
the  party  interposed,  according  to  orders, 
which  he  himself  did  not  understand. 

"A  terrible  thing,  sir,  to  be  sure,  and  a 
sad  pity;  and  I  am  sure  this  is  not  the  sort 
of  sight  you  have  come  to  see  down  in 
Meirion  this  beautiful  summer.  So  don't 
you  think,  sir,  that  it  would  be  more  pleas- 
ant like,  if  you  would  leave  us  to  this  sad 
business  of  ours?  I  have  heard  many 
gentlemen  staying  in  Forth  say  that  there 
is  nothing  to  beat  the  view  from  the  hill 
over  there,  not  in  the  whole  of  Wales." 

Every  one  is  polite  in  Meirion,  but  some- 
how Merritt  understood  that,  in  English, 
this  speech  meant  "move  on." 

Merritt  moved  back  to  Forth — he  was  not 
in  the  humor  for  any  idle,  pleasurable 
strolling  after  so  dreadful  a  meeting  with 
death.  He  made  some  inquiries  in  the  town 
about  the  dead  man,  but  nothing  seemed 
known  of  him.  It  was  said  that  he  had  been 


The  Terror 

on  his  honeymoon,  that  he  had  been  staying 
at  the  Forth  Castle  Hotel;  but  the  people 
of  the  hotel  declared  that  they  had  never 
heard  of  such  a  person.  Merritt  got  the 
local  paper  at  the  end  of  the  week ;  there  was 
not  a  word  in  it  of  any  fatal  accident  in  the 
marsh.  He  met  the  sergeant  of  police  in 
the  street.  That  officer  touched  his  helmet 
with  the  utmost  politeness  and  a  "hope  you 
are  enjoying  yourself,  sir;  indeed  you  do 
look  a  lot  better  already" ;  but  as  to  the  poor 
man  who  was  found  drowned  or  stifled  in 
the  marsh,  he  knew  nothing. 

The  next  day  Merritt  made  up  his  mind 
to  go  to  the  marsh  to  see  whether  he  could 
find  anything  to  account  for  so  strange  a 
death.  What  he  found  was  a  man  with  an 
armlet  standing  by  the  gate.  The  armlet 
had  the  letters  "C.  W."  on  it,  which  are  un- 
derstood to  mean  Coast  Watcher.  The 
Watcher  said  he  had  strict  instructions  to 
keep  everybody  away  from  the  marsh. 
Why?  He  didn't  know,  but  some  said  that 
[116] 


The  Terror 

the  river  was  changing  its  course  since  the 
new  railway  embankment  was  built,  and  the 
marsh  had  become  dangerous  to  people  who 
didn't  know  it  thoroughly. 

"Indeed,  sir,"  he  added,  "it  is  part  of  my 
orders  not  to  set  foot  on  the  other  side  of 
that  gate  myself,  not  for  one  scrag-end  of 
a  minute." 

Merritt  glanced  over  the  gate  incredu- 
lously. The  marsh  looked  as  it  had  always 
looked;  there  was  plenty  of  sound,  hard 
ground  to  walk  on;  he  could  see  the  track 
that  he  used  to  follow  as  firm  as  ever.  He 
did  not  believe  in  the  story  of  the  changing 
course  of  the  river,  and  Lewis  said  he  had 
never  heard  of  anything  of  the  kind.  But 
Merritt  had  put  the  question  in  the  middle 
of  general  conversation;  he  had  not  led  up 
to  it  from  any  discussion  of  the  death  in 
the  marsh,  and  so  the  doctor  was  taken  un- 
awares. If  he  had  known  of  the  connec- 
tion in  Merritt's  mind  between  the  alleged 
changing  of  the  Afon's  course  and  the 


The  Terror 

tragical  event  in  the  marsh,  no  doubt  he 
would  have  confirmed  the  official  explana- 
tion. He  was,  above  all  things,  anxious  to 
prevent  his  sister  and  her  husband  from 
finding  out  that  the  invisible  hand  of  terror 
that  ruled  at  Midlingham  was  ruling  also 
in  Meirion. 

Lewis  himself  had  little  doubt  that  the 
man  who  was  found  dead  in  the  marsh  had 
been  struck  down  by  the  secret  agency,  what- 
ever it  was,  that  had  already  accomplished 
so  much  of  evil;  but  it  was  a  chief  part  of 
the  terror  that  no  one  knew  for  certain  that 
this  or  that  particular  event  was  to  be  as- 
cribed to  it.  People  do  occasionally  fall 
over  cliffs  through  their  own  carelessness, 
and  as  the  case  of  Garcia,  the  Spanish  sailor, 
showed,  cottagers  and  their  wives  and  chil- 
dren are  now  and  then  the  victims  of  savage 
and  purposeless  violence.  Lewis  had  never 
wandered  about  the  marsh  himself;  but 
Remnant  had  pottered  round  it  and  about  it, 
and  declared  that  the  man  who  met  his  death 
[118] 


The  Terror 

there — his  name  was  never  known,  in  Forth 
at  all  events — must  either  have  committed 
suicide  by  deliberately  lying  prone  in  the 
ooze  and  stifling  himself,  or  else  must  have 
been  held  down  in  it.  There  were  no  de- 
tails available,  so  it  was  clear  that  the  au- 
thorities had  classified  this  death  with  the 
others;  still,  the  man  might  have  committed 
suicide,  or  he  might  have  had  a  sudden 
seizure  and  fallen  in  the  slimy  water  face- 
downwards.  And  so  on:  it  was  possible  to 
believe  that  case  A  or  B  or  C  was  in  the 
category  of  ordinary  accidents  or  ordinary 
crimes.  But  it  was  not  possible  to  believe 
that  A  and  B  and  C  were  all  in  that  category. 
And  thus  it  was  to  the  end,  and  thus  it  is 
now.  We  know  that  the  terror  reigned, 
and  how  it  reigned,  but  there  were  many 
dreadful  events  ascribed  to  its  rule  about 
which  there  must  always  be  room  for  doubt. 
For  example,  there  was  the  case  of  the 
Mary  Ann,  the  rowing-boat  which  came  to 
grief  in  so  strange  a  manner,  almost  under 


The  Terror 

Merritt's  eyes.  In  my  opinion  he  was  quite 
wrong  in  associating  the  sorry  fate  of  the 
boat  and  her  occupants  with  a  system  of 
signaling  by  flashlights  which  he  detected 
or  thought  that  he  detected,  on  the  after- 
noon in  which  the  Mary  Ann  was  capsized. 
I  believe  his  signaling  theory  to  be  all  non- 
sense, in  spite  of  the  naturalized  German 
governess  who  was  lodging  with  her  em- 
ployers in  the  suspected  house.  But,  on  the 
other  hand,  there  is  no  doubt  in  my  own 
mind  that  the  boat  was  overturned  and  those 
in  it  drowned  by  the  work  of  the  terror. 


[120] 


CHAPTER  IX  The  Light  on 

the  Water 

LET  it  be  noted  carefully  that  so  far 
Merritt  had  not  the  slightest  suspi- 
cion that  the  terror  of  Midlingham 
was  quick  over  Meirion.  Lewis  had 
watched  and  shepherded  him  carefully.  He 
had  let  out  no  suspicion  of  what  had  hap- 
pened in  Meirion,  and  before  taking  his 
brother-in-law  to  the  club  he  had  passed 
round  a  hint  among  the  members.  He  did 
not  tell  the  truth  about  Midlingham — and 
here  again  is  a  point  of  interest,  that  as  the 
terror  deepened  the  general  public  cooper- 
ated voluntarily,  and,  one  would  say,  almost 
subconsciously,  with  the  authorities  in  con- 
cealing what  they  knew  from  one  another — 
but  he  gave  out  a  desirable  portion  of  the 
truth;  that  his  brother-in-law  was  "nervy," 

[121] 


The  Terror 

not  by  any  means  up  to  the  mark,  and  that 
it  was  therefore  desirable  that  he  should  be 
spared  the  knowledge  of  the  intolerable  and 
tragic  mysteries  which  were  being  enacted 
all  about  them. 

"He  knows  about  that  poor  fellow  who 
was  found  in  the  marsh,"  said  Lewis,  "and 
he  has  a  kind  of  vague  suspicion  that  there 
is  something  out  of  the  common  about  the 
case;  but  no  more  than  that." 

"A  clear  case  of  suggested,  or  rather  com- 
manded suicide,"  said  Remnant.  "I  regard 
it  as  a  strong  confirmation  of  my  theory." 

"Perhaps  so,"  said  the  doctor,  dreading 
lest  he  might  have  to  hear  about  the  Z  Ray 
all  over  again.  "But  please  don't  let  any- 
thing out  to  him ;  I  want  him  to  get  built  up 
thoroughly  before  he  goes  back  to  M  idling- 
ham." 

Then,  on  the  other  hand,  Merritt  was  as 
still  as  death  about  the  doings  of  the  Mid- 
lands ;  he  hated  to  think  of  them,  much  more 
to  speak  of  them ;  and  thus,  as  I  say,  he  and 

[122] 


The  Terror 

the  men  at  the  Forth  Club  kept  their  secrets 
from  one  another;  and  thus,  from  the  be- 
ginning to  the  end  of  the  terror,  the  links 
were  not  drawn  together.  In  many  cases, 
no  doubt,  A  and  B  met  every  day  and  talked 
familiarly,  it  may  be  confidentially,  on  other 
matters  of  all  sorts,  each  having  in  his  pos- 
session half  of  the  truth,  which  he  concealed 
from  the  other.  So  the  two  halves  were 
never  put  together  to  make  a  whole. 

Merritt,  as  the  doctor  guessed,  had  a  kind 
of  uneasy  feeling — it  scarcely  amounted  to 
a  suspicion — as  to  the  business  of  the  marsh ; 
chiefly  because  he  thought  the  official  talk 
about  the  railway  embankment  and  the 
course  of  the  river  rank  nonsense.  But 
finding  that  nothing  more  happened,  he  let 
the  matter  drop  from  his  mind,  and  settled 
himself  down  to  enjoy  his  holiday. 

He  found  to  his  delight  that  there  were 

no  sentries  or  watchers  to  hinder  him  from 

the  approach  to   Larnac   Bay,   a  delicious 

cove,  a  place  where  the  ashgrove  and  the 

[123] 


The  Terror 

green  meadow  and  the  glistening  bracken 
sloped  gently  down  to  red  rocks  and  firm 
yellow  sands.  Merritt  remembered  a  rock 
that  formed  a  comfortable  seat,  and  here  he 
established  himself  of  a  golden  afternoon, 
and  gazed  at  the  blue  of  the  sea  and  the 
crimson  bastions  and  bays  of  the  coast  as  it 
bent  inward  to  Sarnau  and  swept  out  again 
southward  to  the  odd-shaped  promontory 
called  the  Dragon's  Head.  Merritt  gazed 
on,  amused  by  the  antics  of  the  porpoises 
who  were  tumbling  and  splashing  and  gam- 
boling a  little  way  out  at  sea,  charmed  by 
the  pure  and  radiant  air  that  was  so  differ- 
ent from  the  oily  smoke  that  often  stood  for 
heaven  at  Midlingham,  and  charmed,  too, 
by  the  white  farmhouses  dotted  here  and 
there  on  the  heights  of  the  curving  coast. 

Then  he  noticed  a  little  row-boat  at  about 
two  hundred  yards  from  the  shore.  There 
were  two  or  three  people  aboard,  he  could 
not  quite  make  out  how  many,  and  they 
seemed  to  be  doing  something  with  a  line; 
[124] 


The  Terror 

they  were  no  doubt  fishing,  and  Merritt 
(who  disliked  fish)  wondered  how  people 
could  spoil  such  an  afternoon,  such  a  sea, 
such  pellucid  and  radiant  air  by  trying  to 
catch  white,  flabby,  offensive,  evil-smelling 
creatures  that  would  be  excessively  nasty 
when  cooked.  He  puzzled  over  this  prob- 
lem and  turned  away  from  it  to  the  con- 
templation of  the  crimson  headlands.  And 
then  he  says  that  he  noticed  that  signaling 
was  going  on.  Flashing  lights  of  intense 
brilliance,  he  declares,  were  coming  from  one 
of  those  farms  on  the  heights  of  the  coast; 
it  was  as  if  white  fire  was  spouting  from  it. 
Merritt  was  certain,  as  the  light  appeared 
and  disappeared,  that  some  message  was 
being  sent,  and  he  regretted  that  he 
knew  nothing  of  heliography.  Three  short 
flashes,  a  long  and  very  brilliant  flash,  then 
two  short  flashes.  Merritt  fumbled  in  his 
pocket  for  pencil  and  paper  so  that  he  might 
record  these  signals,  and,  bringing  his  eyes 
down  to  the  sea  level,  he  became  aware,  with 
[125] 


The  Terror 

amazement  and  horror,  that  the  boat  had 
disappeared.  All  that  he  could  see  was 
some  vague,  dark  object  far  to  westward, 
running  out  with  the  tide. 

Now  it  is  certain,  unfortunately,  that  the 
Mary  Ann  was  capsized  and  that  two  school- 
boys and  the  sailor  in  charge  were  drowned. 
The  bones  of  the  boat  were  found  amongst 
the  rocks  far  along  the  coast,  and  the  three 
bodies  were  also  washed  ashore.  The  sailor 
could  not  swim  at  all,  the  boys  only  a  little, 
and  it  needs  an  exceptionally  fine  swimmer 
to  fight  against  the  outward  suck  of  the  tide 
as  it  rushes  past  Pengareg  Point. 

But  I  have  no  belief  whatever  in  Mer- 
ritt's  theory.  He  held  (and  still  holds,  for 
all  I  know),  that  the  flashes  of  light  which 
he  saw  coming  from  Penyrhaul,  the  farm- 
house on  the  height,  had  some  connection 
with  the  disaster  to  the  Mary  Ann.  When 
it  was  ascertained  that  a  family  were  spend- 
ing their  summer  at  the  farm,  and  that  the 
governess  was  a  German,  though  a  long 
[126] 


The  Terror 

naturalized  German,  Merritt  could  not  see 
that  there  was  anything  left  to  argue  about, 
though  there  might  be  many  details  to  dis- 
cover. But,  in  my  opinion,  all  this  was  a 
mere  mare's  nest;  the  flashes  of  brilliant 
light  were  caused,  no  doubt,  by  the  sun  light- 
ing up  one  window  of  the  farmhouse  after 
the  other. 

Still,  Merritt  was  convinced  from  the  very 
first,  even  before  the  damning  circumstance 
of  the  German  governess  was  brought  to 
light;  and  on  the  evening  of  the  disaster, 
as  Lewis  and  he  sat  together  after  dinner, 
he  was  endeavoring  to  put  what  he  called 
the  common  sense  of  the  matter  to  the 
doctor. 

"If  you  hear  a  shot,"  said  Merritt,  "and 
you  see  a  man  fall,  you  know  pretty  well 
what  killed  him." 

There  was  a  flutter  of  wild  wings  in  the 

room.     A  great  moth  beat  to  and  fro  and 

dashed  itself  madly  against  the  ceiling,  the 

walls,  the  glass  bookcase.     Then  a  sputter- 

[127] 


The  Terror 

ing  sound,  a  momentary  dimming  of  the 
lamp.  The  moth  had  succeeded  in  its  myste- 
rious quest. 

"Can  you  tell  me,"  said  Lewis  as  if  he 
were  answering  Merritt,  "why  moths  rush 
into  the  flame?" 

Lewis  had  put  his  question  as  to  the 
strange  habits  of  the  common  moth  to  Mer- 
ritt with  the  deliberate  intent  of  closing  the 
debate  on  death  by  heliograph.  The  query 
was  suggested,  of  course,  by  the  incident  of 
the  moth  in  the  lamp,  and  Lewis  thought 
that  he  had  said,  "Oh,  shut  up !"  in  a  some- 
what elegant  manner.  And,  in  fact  Merritt 
looked  dignified,  remained  silent,  and  helped 
himself  to  port. 

That  was  the  end  that  the  doctor  had  de- 
sired. He  had  no  doubt  in  his  own  mind 
that  the  affair  of  the  Mary  Ann  was  but  one 
more  item  in  the  long  account  of  horrors 
that  grew  larger  almost  with  every  day; 
[128] 


The  Terror 

and  he  was  in  no  humor  to  listen  to  wild  and 
futile  theories  as  to  the  manner  in  which 
the  disaster  had  been  accomplished.  Here 
was  a  proof  that  the  terror  that  was  upon 
them  was  mighty  not  only  on  the  land  but 
on  the  waters ;  for  Lewis  could  not  see  that 
the  boat  could  have  been  attacked  by  any 
ordinary  means  of  destruction.  From  Mer- 
ritt's  story,  it  must  have  been  in  shallow 
water.  The  shore  of  Larnac  Bay  shelves 
very  gradually,  and  the  Admiralty  charts 
showed  the  depth  of  water  two  hundred 
yards  out  to  be  only  two  fathoms ;  this  would 
be  too  shallow  for  a  submarine.  And  it 
could  not  have  been  shelled,  and  it  could  not 
have  been  torpedoed;  there  was  no  explo- 
sion. The  disaster  might  have  been  due  to 
carelessness;  boys,  he  considered,  will  play 
the  fool  anywhere,  even  in  a  boat;  but  he 
did  not  think  so;  the  sailor  would  have 
stopped  them.  And,  it  may  be  mentioned, 
that  the  two  boys  were  as  a  matter  of  fact 
[129] 


The '  Terror 

extremely  steady,  sensible  young  fellows,  not 
in  the  least  likely  to  play  foolish  tricks  of 
any  kind. 

Lewis  was  immersed  in  these  reflections, 
having  successfully  silenced  his  brother-in- 
law  ;  he  was  trying  in  vain  to  find  some  clue 
to  the  horrible  enigma.  The  Midlingham 
theory  of  a  concealed  German  force,  hiding 
in  places  under  the  earth,  was  extravagant 
enough,  and  yet  it  seemed  the  only  solution 
that  approached  plausibility;  but  then  again 
even  a  subterranean  German  host  would 
hardly  account  for  this  wreckage  of  a  boat, 
floating  on  a  calm  sea.  And  then  what  of 
the  tree  with  the  burning  in  it  that  had  ap- 
peared in  the  garden  there  a  few  weeks 
ago,  and  the  cloud  with  a  burning  in  it  that 
had  shown  over  the  trees  of  the  Midland 
village  ? 

I  think  I  have  already  written  something 
of  the  probable  emotions  of  the  mathema- 
tician confronted  suddenly  with  an  un- 
doubted two-sided  triangle.  I  said,  if  I  re- 


The  Terror 

member,  that  he  would  be  forced,  in  de- 
cency, to  go  mad;  and  I  believe  that  Lewis 
was  very  near  to  this  point.  He  felt  him- 
self confronted  with  an  intolerable  problem 
that  most  instantly  demanded  solution,  and 
yet,  with  the  same  breath,  as  it  were,  denied 
the  possibility  of  there  being  any  solution. 
People  were  being  killed  in  an  inscrutable 
manner  by  some  inscrutable  means,  day 
after  day,  and  one  asked  "why"  and  "how" ; 
and  there  seemed  no  answer.  In  the  Mid- 
lands, where  every  kind  of  munitionment 
was  manufactured,  the  explanation  of  Ger- 
man agency  was  plausible;  and  even  if  the 
subterranean  notion  was  to  be  rejected  as 
savoring  altogether  too  much  of  the  fairy- 
tale, or  rather  of  the  sensational  romance, 
yet  it  was  possible  that  the  backbone  of  the 
theory  was  true;  the  Germans  might  have 
planted  their  agents  in  some  way  or  another 
in  the  midst  of  our  factories.  But  here  in 
Meirion,  what  serious  effect  could  be  pro- 
duced by  the  casual  and  indiscriminate 
[131] 


The  Terror 

slaughter  of  a  couple  of  schoolboys  in  a  boat, 
of  a  harmless  holiday-maker  in  a  marsh? 
The  creation  of  an  atmosphere  of  terror  and 
dismay?  It  was  possible,  of  course,  but  it 
hardly  seemed  tolerable,  in  spite  of  the  enor- 
mities of  Louvain  and  of  the  Lusitania. 

Into  these  meditations,  and  into  the  still 
dignified  silence  of  Merritt  broke  the  rap  on 
the  door  of  Lewis's  man,  and  those  words 
which  harass  the  ease  of  the  country  doc- 
tor when  he  tries  to  take  any  ease :  "You're 
wanted  in  the  surgery,  if  you  please,  sir." 
Lewis  bustled  out,  and  appeared  no  more 
that  night. 

The  doctor  had  been  summoned  to  a  little 
hamlet  on  the  outskirts  of  Forth,  separated 
from  it  by  half  a  mile  or  three-quarters  of 
road.  One  dignifies,  indeed,  this  settlement 
without  a  name  in  calling  it  a  hamlet ;  it  was 
a  mere  row  of  four  cottages,  built  about  a 
hundred  years  ago  for  the  accommodation 
of  the  workers  in  a  quarry  long  since  dis- 


The  Terror 

used.  In  one  of  these  cottages  the  doctor 
found  a  father  and  mother  weeping  and  cry- 
ing out  to  "doctor  bach,  doctor  bach,"  and 
two  frightened  children,  and  one  little  body, 
still  and  dead.  It  was  the  youngest  of 
the  three,  little  Johnnie,  and  he  was 
dead. 

The  doctor  found  that  the  child  had  been 
asphyxiated.  He  felt  the  clothes ;  they  were 
dry;  it  was  not  a  case  of  drowning.  He 
looked  at  the  neck;  there  was  no  mark  of 
strangling.  He  asked  the  father  how  it  had 
happened,  and  father  and  mother,  weeping 
most  lamentably,  declared  they  had  no 
knowledge  of  how  their  child  had  been  killed : 
"unless  it  was  the  People  that  had  done  it." 
The  Celtic  fairies  are  still  malignant. 
Lewis  asked  what  had  happened  that  eve- 
ning; where  had  the  child  been? 

"Was  he  with  his  brother  and  sister? 
Don't  they  know  anything  about  it?" 

Reduced  into  some  sort  of  order  from  its 


The  Terror 

original  piteous  confusion,  this  is  the  story 
that  the  doctor  gathered. 

All  three  children  had  been  well  and 
happy  through  the  day.  They  had  walked 
in  with  the  mother,  Mrs.  Roberts,  to  Forth 
on  a  marketing  expedition  in  the  afternoon ; 
they  had  returned  to  the  cottage,  had  had 
their  tea,  and  afterwards  played  about  on 
the  road  in  front  of  the  house.  John 
Roberts  had  come  home  somewhat  late  from 
his  work,  and  it  was  after  dusk  when  the 
family  sat  down  to  supper.  Supper  over, 
the  three  children  went  out  again  to  play 
with  other  children  from  the  cottage  next 
door,  Mrs.  Roberts  telling  them  that  they 
might  have  half  an  hour  before  going  to  bed. 

The  two  mothers  came  to  the  cottage  gates 
at  the  same  moment  and  called  out  to  their 
children  to  come  along  and  be  quick  about 
it.  The  two  small  families  had  been  play- 
ing on  the  strip  of  turf  across  the  road,  just 
by  the  stile  into  the  fields.  The  children 
[134] 


The  Terror 

ran  across  the  road;  all  of  them  except 
Johnnie  Roberts.  His  brother  Willie  said 
that  just  as  their  mother  called  them  he 
heard  Johnnie  cry  out : 

"Oh,  what  is  that  beautiful  shiny  thing 
over  the  stile?" 


[135] 


CHAPTER  X  The  Child 

and  the  Moth 


I 


little  Roberts's  ran  across  the 
road,  up  the  path,  and  into  the 
lighted  room.  Then  they  noticed 
that  Johnnie  had  not  followed  them.  Mrs. 
Roberts  was  doing  something  in  the  back 
kitchen,  and  Mr.  Roberts  had  gone  out  to 
the  shed  to  bring  in  some  sticks  for  the  next 
morning's  fire.  Mrs.  Roberts  heard  the 
children  run  in  and  went  on  with  her  work. 
The  children  whispered  to  one  another  that 
Johnnie  would  "catch  it"  when  their  mother 
came  out  of  the  back  room  and  found  him 
missing;  but  they  expected  he  would  run  in 
through  the  open  door  any  minute.  But  six 
or  seven,  perhaps  ten,  minutes  passed,  and 
there  was  no  Johnnie.  Then  the  father  and 
mother  came  into  the  kitchen  together,  and 
saw  that  their  little  boy  was  not  there. 
[136] 


The  Terror 

They  thought  it  was  some  small  piece  of 
mischief — that  the  two  other  children  had 
hidden  the  boy  somewhere  in  the  room:  in 
the  big  cupboard  perhaps. 

"What  have  you  done  with  him  then?" 
said  Mrs.  Roberts.  "Come  out,  you  little 
rascal,  directly  in  a  minute." 

There  was  no  little  rascal  to  come  out, 
and  Margaret  Roberts,  the  girl,  said  that 
Johnnie  had  not  come  across  the  road  with 
them:  he  must  be  still  playing  all  by  him- 
self by  the  hedge. 

"What  did  you  let  him  stay  like  that 
for?"  said  Mrs.  Roberts.  "Can't  I  trust 
you  for  two  minutes  together?  Indeed  to 
goodness,  you  are  all  of  you  more  trouble 
than  you  are  worth."  She  went  to  the  open 
door: 

"Johnnie!  Come  you  in  directly,  or  you 
will  be  sorry  for  it.  Johnnie !" 

The  poor  woman  called  at  the  door. 
She  went  out  to  the  gate  and  called  there: 

"Come   you,   little  Johnnie.     Come   you, 


The  Terror 

bachgen,  there's  a  good  boy.  I  do  see  you 
hiding  there." 

She  thought  he  must  be  hiding  in  the 
shadow  of  the  hedge,  and  that  he  would 
come  running  and  laughing — "he  was  al- 
ways such  a  happy  little  fellow" — to  her 
across  the  road.  But  no  little  merry  figure 
danced  out  of  the  gloom  of  the  still,  dark 
night;  it  was  all  silence. 

It  was  then,  as  the  mother's  heart  began 
to  chill,  though  she  still  called  cheerfully  to 
the  missing  child,  that  the  elder  boy  told 
how  Johnnie  had  said  there  was  something 
beautiful  by  the  stile:  "and  perhaps  he  did 
climb  over,  and  he  is  running  now  about  the 
meadow,  and  has  lost  his  way." 

The  father  got  his  lantern  then,  and  the 
whole  family  went  crying  and  calling  about 
the  meadow,  promising  cakes  and  sweets 
and  a  fine  toy  to  poor  Johnnie  if  he  would 
come  to  them. 

They  found  the  little  body,  under  the  ash- 
grove  in  the  middle  of  the  field.  He  was 
[138] 


The  Terror 

quite  still  and  dead,  so  still  that  a  great  moth 
had  settled  on  his  forehead,  fluttering  away 
when  they  lifted  him  up. 

Dr.  Lewis  heard  this  story.  There  was 
nothing  to  be  done;  little  to  be  said  to  these 
most  unhappy  people. 

"Take  care  of  the  two  that  you  have  left 
to  you,"  said  the  doctor  as  he  went  away. 
"Don't  let  them  out  of  your  sight  if  you  can 
help  it.  It  is  dreadful  times  that  we  are 
living  in." 

It  is  curious  to  record  that  all  through 
these  dreadful  times  the  simple  little  "sea- 
son" went  through  its  accustomed  course  at 
Forth.  The  war  and  its  consequences  had 
somewhat  thinned  the  numbers  of  the  sum- 
mer visitors;  still  a  very  fair  contingent  of 
them  occupied  the  hotels  and  boarding- 
houses  and  lodging-houses  and  bathed  from 
the  old-fashioned  machines  on  one  beach,  or 
from  the  new-fashioned  tents  on  the  other, 
and  sauntered  in  the  sun,  or  lay  stretched 
out  in  the  shade  under  the  trees  that  grow 
[139] 


The  Terror 

down  almost  to  the  water's  edge.  Forth 
never  tolerated  Ethiopians  or  shows  of  any 
kind  on  its  sands,  but  "The  Rockets"  did 
very  well  during  that  summer  in  their  gar- 
den entertainment,  given  in  the  castle 
grounds,  and  the  fit-up  companies  that  came 
to  the  Assembly  Rooms  are  said  to  have  paid 
their  bills  to  a  woman  and  to  a  man. 

Forth  depends  very  largely  on  its  midland 
and  northern  custom,  custom  of  a  prosper- 
ous, well-established  sort.  People  who 
think  Llandudno  overcrowded  and  Colwyn 
Bay  too  raw  and  red  and  new,  come  year 
after  year  to  the  placid  old  town  in  the  south- 
west and  delight  in  its  peace;  and  as  I  say, 
they  enjoyed  themselves  much  as  usual  there 
in  the  summer  of  1915.  Now  and  then  they 
became  conscious,  as  Mr.  Merritt  became 
conscious,  that  they  could  not  wander  about 
quite  in  the  old  way;  but  they  accepted 
sentries  and  coast-watchers  and  people  who 
politely  pointed  out  the  advantages  of  seeing 
the  view  from  this  point  rather  than  from 
[140] 


The  Terror 

that  as  very  necessary  consequences  of  the 
dreadful  war  that  was  being  waged ;  nay,  as 
a  Manchester  man  said,  after  having  been 
turned  back  from  his  favorite  walk  to 
Castell  Coch,  it  was  gratifying  to  think  that 
they  were  so  well  looked  after. 

"So  far  as  I  can  see,"  he  added,  "there's 
nothing  to  prevent  a  submarine  from  stand- 
ing out  there  by  Ynys  Sant  and  landing  half 
a  dozen  men  in  a  collapsible  boat  in  any  of 
these  little  coves.  And  pretty  fools  we 
should  look,  shouldn't  we,  with  our  throats 
cut  on  the  sands;  or  carried  back  to  Ger- 
many in  the  submarine?"  He  tipped  the 
coast-watcher  half-a-crown. 

"That's  right,  lad,"  he  said,  "you  give  us 
the  tip." 

Now  here  was  a  strange  thing.  The 
north-countryman  had  his  thoughts  on  elu- 
sive submarines  and  German  raiders;  the 
watcher  had  simply  received  instructions  to 
keep  people  off  the  Castell  Coch  fields,  with- 
out reason  assigned.  And  there  can  be  no 
[Hi] 


The  Terror 

doubt  that  the  authorities  themselves,  while 
they  marked  out  the  fields  as  in  the  "terror 
zone,"  gave  their  orders  in  the  dark  and 
were  themselves  profoundly  in  the  dark  as 
to  the  manner  of  the  slaughter  that  had  been 
done  there ;  for  if  they  had  understood  what 
had  happened,  they  would  have  understood 
also  that  their  restrictions  were  useless. 

The  Manchester  man  was  warned  off  his 
walk  about  ten  days  after  Johnnie  Roberts's 
death.  The  Watcher  had  been  placed  at  his 
post  because,  the  night  before,  a  young 
farmer  had  been  found  by  his  wife  lying 
in  the  grass  close  to  the  Castle,  with  no  scar 
on  him,  nor  any  mark  of  violence,  but  stone 
dead. 

The  wife  of  the  dead  man,  Joseph  Cra- 
dock,  finding  her  husband  lying  motionless 
on  the  dewy  turf,  went  white  and  stricken 
up  the  path  to  the  village  and  got  two  men 
who  bore  the  body  to  the  farm.  Lewis  was 
sent  for,  and  knew  at  once  when  he  saw  the 
dead  man  that  he  had  perished  in  the  way 


The  Terror 

that  the  little  Roberts  boy  had  perished — 
whatever  that  awful  way  might  be.  Cra- 
dock  had  been  asphyxiated;  and  here  again 
there  was  no  mark  of  a  grip  on  the  throat. 
It  might  have  been  a  piece  of  work  by  Burke 
and  Hare,  the  doctor  reflected;  a  pitch  plas- 
ter might  have  been  clapped  over  the  man's 
mouth  and  nostrils  and  held  there. 

Then  a  thought  struck  him;  his  brother- 
in-law  had  talked  of  a  new  kind  of  poison 
gas  that  was  said  to  be  used  against  the 
munition  workers  in  the  Midlands:  was  it 
possible  that  the  deaths  of  the  man  and  the 
boy  were  due  to  some  such  instrument  ?  He 
applied  his  tests  but  could  find  no  trace  of 
any  gas  having  been  employed.  Carbonic 
acid  gas?  A  man  could  not  be  killed  with 
that  in  the  open  air ;  to  be  fatal  that  required 
a  confined  space,  such  a  position  as  the  bot- 
tom of  a  huge  vat  or  of  a  well. 

He  did  not  know  how  Cradock  had  been 
killed;  he  confessed  it  to  himself.  He  had 
been  suffocated;  that  was  all  he  could  say. 
[143] 


The  Terror 

It  seemed  that  the  man  had  gone  out  at 
about  half -past  nine  to  look  after  some 
beasts.  The  field  in  which  they  were  was 
about  five  minutes'  walk  from  the  house. 
He  told  his  wife  he  would  be  back  in  a  quar- 
ter of  an  hour  or  twenty  minutes.  He  did 
not  return,  and  when  he  had  been  gone  for 
three-quarters  of  an  hour  Mrs.  Cradock 
went  out  to  look  for  him.  She  went  into 
the  field  where  the  beasts  were,  and  every- 
thing seemed  all  right,  but  there  was  no 
trace  of  Cradock.  She  called  out ;  there  was 
no  answer. 

Now  the  meadow  in  which  the  cattle 
were  pastured  is  high  ground;  a  hedge  di- 
vides it  from  the  fields  which  fall  gently 
down  to  the  castle  and  the  sea.  Mrs. 
Cradock  hardly  seemed  able  to  say  why,  hav- 
ing failed  to  find  her  husband  among  his 
beasts,  she  turned  to  the  path  which  led  to 
Castell  Coch.  She  said  at  first  that  she  had 
thought  that  one  of  the  oxen  might  have 
[144] 


The  Terror 

broken  through  the  hedge  and  strayed,  and 
that  Cradock  had  perhaps  gone  after  it. 
And  then,  correcting  herself,  she  said: 

"There  was  that;  and  then  there  was 
something  else  that  I  could  not  make  out  at 
all.  It  seemed  to  me  that  the  hedge  did  look 
different  from  usual.  To  be  sure,  things  do 
look  different  at  night,  and  there  was  a  bit 
of  sea  mist  about,  but  somehow  it  did  look 
odd  to  me,  and  I  said  to  myself,  'have  I  lost 
my  way,  then  ?' ' 

She  declared  that  the  shape  of  the  trees 
in  the  hedge  appeared  to  have  changed,  and 
besides,  it  had  a  look  "as  if  it  was  lighted 
up,  somehow,"  and  so  she  went  on  towards 
the  stile  to  see  what  all  this  could  be,  and 
when  she  came  near  everything  was  as 
usual.  She  looked  over  the  stile  and  called 
and  hoped  to  see  her  husband  coming 
towards  her  or  to  hear  his  voice;  but  there 
was  no  answer,  and  glancing  down  the  path 
she  saw,  or  thought  she  saw,  some  sort  of 


The  Terror 

brightness  on  the  ground,  "a  dim  sort  of 
light  like  a  bunch  of  glow-worms  in  a  hedge- 
bank. 

"And  so  I  climbed  over  the  stile  and  went 
down  the  path,  and  the  light  seemed  to  melt 
away;  and  there  was  my  poor  husband  lying 
on  his  back,  saying  not  a  word  to  me  when  I 
spoke  to  him  and  touched  him." 

So  for  Lewis  the  terror  blackened  and 
became  altogether  intolerable,  and  others, 
he  perceived,  felt  as  he  did.  He  did  not 
know,  he  never  asked  whether  the  men  at 
the  club  had  heard  of  these  deaths  of  the 
child  and  the  young  farmer;  but  no  one 
spoke  of  them.  Indeed,  the  change  was 
evident;  at  the  beginning  of  the  terror  men 
spoke  of  nothing  else;  now  it  had  become 
all  too  awful  for  ingenious  chatter  or  labored 
and  grotesque  theories.  And  Lewis  had 
received  a  letter  from  his  brother-in-law  at 
Midlingham;  it  contained  the  sentence,  "I 
am  afraid  Fanny's  health  has  not  greatly 
[146] 


The  Terror 

benefited  by  her  visit  to  Forth ;  there  are  still 
several  symptoms  I  don't  at  all  like."  And 
this  told  him,  in  a  phraseology  that  the  doc- 
tor and  Merritt  had  agreed  upon,  that  the 
terror  remained  heavy  in  the  Midland  town. 

It  was  soon  after  the  death  of  Cradock 
that  people  began  to  tell  strange  tales  of  a 
sound  that  was  to  be  heard  of  nights  about 
the  hills  and  valleys  to  the  northward  of 
Forth.  A  man  who  had  missed  the  last 
train  from  Meiros  and  had  been  forced  -to 
tramp  the  ten  miles  between  Meiros  and 
Forth  seems  to  have  been  the  first  to  hear 
it.  He  said  he  had  got  to  the  top  of  the 
hill  by  Tredonoc,  somewhere  between  half- 
past  ten  and  eleven,  when  he  first  noticed 
an  odd  noise  that  he  could  not  make  out  at 
all;  it  was  like  a  shout,  a  long,  drawn-out, 
dismal  wail  coming  from  a  great  way  off, 
faint  with  distance.  He  stopped  to  listen, 
thinking  at  first  that  it  might  be  owls  hoot- 
ing in  the  woods;  but  it  was  different,  he 
[i47] 


The  Terror 

said,  from  that :  it  was  a  long  cry,  and  then 
there  was  silence  and  then  it  began  over 
again.  He  could  make  nothing  of  it,  and 
feeling  frightened,  he  did  not  quite  know  of 
what,  he  walked  on  briskly  and  was  glad  to 
see  the  lights  of  Forth  station. 

He  told  his  wife  of  this  dismal  sound  that 
night,  and  she  told  the  neighbors,  and  most 
of  them  thought  that  it  was  "all  fancy" — or 
drink,  or  the  owls  after  all.  But  the  night 
after,  two  or  three  people,  who  had  been  to 
some  small  merrymaking  in  a  cottage  just 
off  the  Meiros  road,  heard  the  sound  as  they 
were  going  home,  soon  after  ten.  They,  too, 
described  it  as  a  long;  wailing  cry,  indescrib- 
ably dismal  in  the  stillness  of  the  autumn 
night ;  "like  the  ghost  of  a  voice,"  said  one ; 
"as  if  it  came  up  from  the  bottom  of  the 
earth,"  said  another. 


[148] 


CHAPTER  XI  At  Treff  Loyne 

Farm 

LET  it  be  remembered,  again  and 
again,  that,  all  the  while  that  the 
terror  lasted,  there  was  no  common 
stock  of  information  as  to  the  dreadful 
things  that  were  being  done.  The  press  had 
not  said  one  word  upon  it,  there  was  no  cri- 
terion by  which  the  mass  of  the  people  could 
separate  fact  from  mere  vague  rumor,  no 
test  by  which  ordinary  misadventure  or 
disaster  could  be  distinguished  from  the 
achievements  of  the  secret  and  awful  force 
that  was  at  work. 

And  so  with  every  event  of  the  passing 
day.  A  harmless  commerical  traveler  might 
show  himself  in  the  course  of  his  business 
in  the  tumbledown  main  street  of  Meiros 
and  find  himself  regarded  with  looks  of  fear 
and  suspicion  as  a  possible  worker  of  mur- 


The  Terror 

der,  while  it  is  likely  enough  that  the  true 
agents  of  the  terror  went  quite  unnoticed. 
And  since  the  real  nature  of  all  this  mys- 
tery of  death  was  unknown,  it  followed 
easily  that  the  signs  and  warnings  and 
omens  of  it  were  all  the  more  unknown. 
Here  was  horror,  there  was  horror;  but 
there  was  no  links  to  join  one  horror  with 
another;  no  common  basis  of  knowledge 
from  which  the  connection  between  this  hor- 
ror and  that  horror  might  be  inferred. 

So  there  was  no  one  who  suspected  at  all 
that  this  dismal  and  hollow  sound  that  was 
now  heard  of  nights  in  the  region  to  the 
north  of  Forth,  had  any  relation  at  all  to  the 
case  of  the  little  girl  who  went  out  one 
afternoon  to  pick  purple  flowers  and  never 
returned,  or  to  the  case  of  the  man  whose 
body  was  taken  out  of  the  peaty  slime  of  the 
marsh,  or  to  the  case  of  Cradock,  dead  in  his 
fields,  with  a  strange  glimmering  of  light 
about  his  body,  as  his  wife  reported.  And 
it  is  a  question  as  to  how  far  the  rumor  of 
[150] 


The  Terror 

this  melancholy,  nocturnal  summons  got 
abroad  at  all.  Lewis  heard  of  it,  as  a  coun- 
try doctor  hears  of  most  things,  driving  up 
and  down  the  lanes,  but  he  heard  of  it  with- 
out much  interest,  with  no  sense  that  it  was 
in  any  sort  of  relation  to  the  terror.  Rem- 
nant had  been  given  the  story  of  the  hollow 
and  echoing  voice  of  the  darkness  in  a  col- 
ored and  picturesque  form;  he  employed  a 
Tredonoc  man  to  work  in  his  garden  once  a 
week.  The  gardener  had  not  heard  the 
summons  himself,  but  he  knew  a  man  who 
had  done  so. 

"Thomas  Jenkins,  Pentoppin,  he  did  put 
his  head  out  late  last  night  to  see  what  the 
weather  was  like,  as  he  was  cutting  a  field 
of  corn  the  next  day,  and  he  did  tell  me  that 
when  he  was  with  the  Methodists  in  Cardi- 
gan he  did  never  hear  no  singing  eloquence 
in  the  chapels  that  was  like  to  it.  He  did 
declare  it  was  like  a  wailing  of  Judgment 
Day." 

Remnant  considered  the  matter,  and  was 


The  Terror 

inclined  to  think  that  the  sound  must  be 
caused  by  a  subterranean  inlet  of  the  sea; 
there  might  be,  he  supposed,  an  imperfect 
or  half -opened  or  tortuous  blow-hole  in  the 
Tredonoc  woods,  and  the  noise  of  the  tide, 
surging  up  below,  might  very  well  produce 
that  effect  of  a  hollow  wailing,  far  away. 
But  neither  he  nor  any  one  else  paid  much 
attention  to  the  matter;  save  the  few  who 
heard  the  call  at  dead  of  night,  as  it  echoed 
awfully  over  the  black  hills. 

The  sound  had  been  heard  for  three  or 
perhaps  four  nights,  when  the  people  com- 
ing out  of  Tredonoc  church  after  morning 
service  on  Sunday  noticed  that  there  was 
a  big  yellow  sheepdog  in  the  churchyard. 
The  dog,  it  appeared,  had  been  waiting  for 
the  congregation;  for  it  at  once  attached 
itself  to  them,  at  first  to  the  whole  body,  and 
then  to  a  group  of  half  a  dozen  who  took 
the  turning  to  the  right.  Two  of  these 
presently  went  off  over  the  fields  to  their  re- 
spective houses,  and  four  strolled  on  in  the 
[152] 


The  Terror 

leisurely  Sunday-morning  manner  of  the 
country,  and  these  the  dog  followed,  keeping 
to  heel  all  the  time.  The  men  were  talking 
hay,  corn  and  markets  and  paid  no  attention 
to  the  animal,  and  so  they  strolled  along  the 
autumn  lane  till  they  came  to  a  gate  in  the 
hedge,  whence  a  roughly  made  farm  road 
went  through  the  fields,  and  dipped  down 
into  the  woods  and  to  Treff  Loyne  farm. 

Then  the  dog  became  like  a  possessed  crea- 
ture. He  barked  furiously.  He  ran  up  to 
one  of  the  men  and  looked  up  at  him,  "as  if 
he  were  begging  for  his  life,"  as  the  man 
said,  and  then  rushed  to  the  gate  and  stood 
by  it,  wagging  his  tail  and  barking  at  inter- 
vals. The  men  stared  and  laughed. 

"Whose  dog  will  that  be?"  said  one  of 
them. 

"It  will  be  Thomas  Griffith's,  Treff 
Loyne,"  said  another. 

"Well,  then,  why  doesn't  he  go  home? 
Go  home  then !"  He  went  through  the  ges- 
ture of  picking  up  a  stone  from  the  road  and 
[i53] 


The  Terror 

throwing  it  at  the  dog.  "Go  home,  then! 
Over  the  gate  with  you/' 

But  the  dog  never  stirred.  He  barked 
and  whined  and  ran  up  to  the  men  and  then 
back  to  the  gate.  At  last  he  came  to  one 
of  them,  and  crawled  and  abased  himself 
on  the  ground  and  then  took  hold  of  the 
man's  coat  and  tried  to  pull  him  in  the  direc- 
tion of  the  gate.  The  farmer  shook  the  dog 
off,  and  the  four  went  on  their  way ;  and  the 
dog  stood  in  the  road  and  watched  them  and 
then  put  up  its  head  and  uttered  a  long  and 
dismal  howl  that  was  despair. 

The  four  farmers  thought  nothing  of  it; 
sheepdogs  in  the  country  are  dogs  to  look 
after  sheep,  and  their  whims  and  fancies  are 
not  studied.  But  the  yellow  dog — he  was 
a  kind  of  degenerate  collie — haunted  the 
Tredonoc  lanes  from  that  day.  He  came  to 
a  cottage  door  one  night  and  scratched  at  it, 
and  when  it  was  opened  lay  down,  and  then, 
barking,  ran  to  the  garden  gate  and  waited, 
entreating,  as  it  seemed,  the  cottager  to  fol- 
[154] 


The  Terror 

low  him.  They  drove  him  away  and  again 
he  gave  that  long  howl  of  anguish.  It  was 
almost  as  bad,  they  said,  as  the  noise  that 
they  had  heard  a  few  nights  before.  And 
then  it  occurred  to  somebody,  so  far  as  I 
can  make  out  with  no  particular  reference 
to  the  odd  conduct  of  the  Treff  Loyne  sheep- 
dog, that  Thomas  Griffith  had  not  been  seen 
for  some  time  past.  He  had  missed  market 
day  at  Forth,  he  had  not  been  at  Tredonoc 
church,  where  he  was  a  pretty  regular  at- 
tendant on  Sunday ;  and  then,  as  heads  were 
put  together,  it  appeared  that  nobody  had 
seen  any  of  the  Griffith  family  for  days  and 
days. 

Now  in  a  town,  even  in  a  small  town,  this 
process  of  putting  heads  together  is  a  pretty 
quick  business.  In  the  country,  especially 
in  a  countryside  of  wild  lands  and  scattered 
and  lonely  farms  and  cottages,  the  affair 
takes  time.  Harvest  was  going  on,  every- 
body was  busy  in  his  own  fields,  and  after 
the  long  day's  hard  work  neither  the  farmer 
[155] 


The  Terror 

nor  his  men  felt  inclined  to  stroll  about  in 
search  of  news  or  gossip.  A  harvester  at 
the  day's  end  is  ready  for  supper  and  sleep 
and  for  nothing  else. 

And  so  it  was  late  in  that  week  when  it 
was  discovered  that  Thomas  Griffith  and  all 
his  house  had  vanished  from  this  world. 

I  have  often  been  reproached  for  my  curi- 
osity over  questions  which  are  apparently  of 
slight  importance,  or  of  no  importance  at 
all.  I  love  to  inquire,  for  instance,  into  the 
question  of  the  visibility  of  a  lighted  candle 
at  a  distance.  Suppose,  that  is,  a  candle 
lighted  on  a  still,  dark  night  in  the  country ; 
what  is  the  greatest  distance  at  which  you 
can  see  that  there  is  a  light  at  all?  And 
then  as  to  the  human  voice ;  what  is  its  carry- 
ing distance,  under  good  conditions,  as  a 
mere  sound,  apart  from  any  matter  of  mak- 
ing out  words  that  may  be  uttered? 

They  are  trivial  questions,  no  doubt,  but 
they  have  always  interested  me,  and  the  lat- 
ter point  has  its  application  to  the  strange 
[156] 


The  Terror 

business  of  Treff  Loyne.  That  melancholy 
and  hollow  sound,  that  wailing  summons 
that  appalled  the  hearts  of  those  who  heard 
it  was,  indeed,  a  human  voice,  produced  in 
a  very  exceptional  manner;  and  it  seems  to 
have  been  heard  at  points  varying  from  a 
mile  and  a  half  to  two  miles  from  the  farm. 
I  do  not  know  whether  this  is  anything  ex- 
traordinary; I  do  not  know  whether  the  pe- 
culiar method  of  production  was  calculated 
to  increase  or  to  diminish  the  carrying  power 
of  the  sound. 

Again  and  again  I  have  laid  emphasis  in 
this  story  of  the  terror  on  the  strange  isola- 
tion of  many  of  the  farms  and  cottages  in 
Meirion.  I  have  done  so  in  the  effort  to  con- 
vince the  townsman  of  something  that  he 
has  never  known.  To  the  Londoner  a  house 
a  quarter  of  a  mile  from  the  outlying  sub- 
urban lamp,  with  no  other  dwelling  within 
two  hundred  yards,  is  a  lonely  house,  a  place 
to  fit  with  ghosts  and  mysteries  and  terrors. 
How  can  he  understand  then,  the  true  loneli- 
[157] 


The  Terror 

ness  of  the  white  farmhouses  of  Meirion, 
dotted  here  and  there,  for  the  most  part  not 
even  on  the  little  lanes  and  deep  winding  by- 
ways, but  set  in  the  very  heart  of  the  fields, 
or  alone  on  huge  bastioned  headlands  facing 
the  sea,  and  whether  on  the  high  verge  of  the 
sea  or  on  the  hills  or  in  the  hollows  of  the 
inner  country,  hidden  from  the  sight  of  men, 
far  from  the  sound  of  any  common  call. 
There  is  Penyrhaul,  for  example,  the  farm 
from  which  the  foolish  Merritt  thought  he 
saw  signals  of  light  being  made:  from  sea- 
ward it  is  of  course,  widely  visible ;  but  from 
landward,  owing  partly  to  the  curving  and 
indented  configuration  of  the  bay,  I  doubt 
whether  any  other  habitation  views  it  from 
a  nearer  distance  than  three  miles. 

And  of  all  these  hidden  and  remote  places, 
I  doubt  if  any  is  so  deeply  buried  as  Treff 
Loyne.  I  have  little  or  no  Welsh,  I  am 
sorry  to  say,  but  I  suppose  that  the  name  is 
corrupted  from  Trellwyn,  or  Tref-y-llwyn, 
"the  place  in  the  grove,"  and,  indeed,  it  lies 
[158] 


The  Terror 

in  the  very  heart  of  dark,  overhanging 
woods.  A  deep,  narrow  valley  runs  down 
from  the  high  lands  of  the  Allt,  through 
these  woods,  through  steep  hillsides  of 
bracken  and  gorse,  right  down  to  the  great 
marsh,  whence  Merritt  saw  the  dead  man 
being  carried.  The  valley  lies  away  from 
any  road,  even  from  that  by-road,  little  bet- 
ter than  a  bridlepath,  where  the  four  farm- 
ers, returning  from  church  were  perplexed 
by  the  strange  antics  of  the  sheep-dog.  One 
cannot  say  that  the  valley  is  overlooked,  even 
from  a  distance,  for  so  narrow  is  it  that  the 
ashgroves  that  rim  it  on  either  side  seem  to 
meet  and  shut  it  in.  I,  at  all  events,  have 
never  found  any  high  place  from  which  Treff 
Loyne  is  visible ;  though,  looking  down  from 
the  Allt,  I  have  seen  blue  wood-smoke  rising 
from  its  hidden  chimneys. 

Such  was  the  place,  then,  to  which  one 
September  afternoon  a  party  went  up  to  dis- 
cover what  had  happened  to  Griffith  and  his 
family.     There  were  half  a  dozen  farmers, 
[159] 


The  Terror 

a  couple  of  policemen,  and  four  soldiers, 
carrying  their  arms ;  those  last  had  been  lent 
by  the  officer  commanding  at  the  camp. 
Lewis,  too,  was  of  the  party;  he  had  heard 
by  chance  that  no  one  knew  what  had  become 
of  Griffith  and  his  family;  and  he  was  anx- 
ious about  a  young  fellow,  a  painter,  of  his 
acquaintance,  who  had  been  lodging  at  Treff 
Loyne  all  the  summer. 

They  all  met  by  the  gate  of  Tredonoc 
churchyard,  and  tramped  solemnly  along  the 
narrow  lane ;  all  of  them,  I  think,  with  some 
vague  discomfort  of  mind,  with  a  certain 
shadowy  fear,  as  of  men  who  do  not  quite 
know  what  they  may  encounter.  Lewis 
heard  the  corporal  and  the  three  soldiers 
arguing  over  their  orders. 

"The  Captain  says  to  me,"  muttered  the 
corporal,  "  'Don't  hesitate  to  shoot  if  there's 
any  trouble/  'Shoot  what,  sir/  I  says. 
The  trouble/  says  he,  and  that's  all  I  could 
get  out  of  him." 

The  men  grumbled  in  reply ;  Lewis  thought 
[160] 


The  Terror 

he  heard  some  obscure  reference  to  rat- 
poison,  and  wondered  what  they  were  talk- 
ing about. 

They  came  to  the  gate  in  the  hedge,  where 
the  farm  road  led  down  to  Treff  Loyne. 
They  followed  this  track,  roughly  made,  with 
grass  growing  up  between  its  loosely  laid 
stones,  down  by  the  hedge  from  field  to  wood, 
till  at  last  they  came  to  the  sudden  walls  of 
the  valley,  and  the  sheltering  groves  of  the 
ash  trees.  Here  the  way  curved  down  the 
steep  hillside,  and  bent  southward,  and  fol- 
lowed henceforward  the  hidden  hollow  of  the 
valley,  under  the  shadow  of  the  trees. 

Here  was  the  farm  enclosure ;  the  outlying 
walls  of  the  yard  and  the  barns  and  sheds 
and  outhouses.  One  of  the  farmers  threw 
open  the  gate  and  walked  into  the  yard,  and 
forthwith  began  bellowing  at  the  top  of  his 
voice : 

"Thomas  Griffith!  Thomas  Griffith! 
Where  be  you,  Thomas  Griffith?" 

The  rest  followed  him.  The  corporal 
[161] 


The  Terror 

snapped  out  an  order  over  his  shoulder,  and 
there  was  a  rattling  metallic  noise  as  the  men 
fixed  their  bayonets  and  became  in  an  in- 
stant dreadful  dealers  out  of  death,  in  place 
of  harmless  fellows  with  a  feeling  for  beer. 

"Thomas  Griffith!"  again  bellowed  the 
farmer. 

There  was  no  answer  to  this  summons. 
But  they  found  poor  Griffith  lying  on  his 
face  at  the  edge  of  the  pond  in  the  middle 
of  the  yard.  There  was  a  ghastly  wound 
in  his  side,  as  if  a  sharp  stake  had  been 
driven  into  his  body. 


[162] 


CHAPTER  XII  The  Letter 

of  Wrath 

IT  was  a  still  September  afternoon.  No 
wind  stirred  in  the  hanging  woods  that 
were  dark  all  about  the  ancient  house 
of  Treff  Loyne ;  the  only  sound  in  the  dim  air 
was  the  lowing  of  the  cattle;  they  had  wan- 
dered, it  seemed,  from  the  fields  and  had 
come  in  by  the  gate  of  the  farmyard  and 
stood  there  melancholy,  as  if  they  mourned 
for  their  dead  master.  And  the  horses; 
four  great,  heavy,  patient-looking  beasts 
they  were  there  too,  and  in  the  lower  field 
the  sheep  were  standing,  as  if  they  waited 
to  be  fed. 

"You  would  think  they  all  knew  there  was 
something  wrong,"  one  of  the  soldiers  mut- 
tered to  another.     A  pale  sun  showed  for  a 
moment   and   glittered   on   their   bayonets. 
[163] 


The  Terror 

They  were  standing  about  the  body  of  poor, 
dead  Griffith,  with  a  certain  grimness  grow- 
ing on  their  faces  and  hardening  there. 
Their  corporal  snapped  something  at  them 
again;  they  were  quite  ready.  Lewis  knelt 
down  by  the  dead  man  and  looked  closely  at 
the  great  gaping  wound  in  his  side. 

"He's  been  dead  a  long  time,"  he  said. 
"A  week,  two  weeks,  perhaps.  He  was 
killed  by  some  sharp  pointed  weapon.  How 
about  the  family?  How  many  are  there  of 
them?  I  never  attended  them." 

"There  was  Griffith,  and  his  wife,  and  his 
son  Thomas  and  Mary  Griffith,  his  daugh- 
ter. And  I  do  think  there  was  a  gentleman 
lodging  with  them  this  summer." 

That  was  from  one  of  the  farmers.  They 
all  looked  at  one  another,  this  party  of  res- 
cue, who  knew  nothing  of  the  danger  that 
had  smitten  this  house  of  quiet  people,  noth- 
ing of  the  peril  which  had  brought  them  to 
this  pass  of  a  farmyard  with  a  dead  man 
in  it,  and  his  beasts  standing  patiently  about 
[164] 


The  Terror 

him,  as  if  they  waited  for  the  farmer  to  rise 
up  and  give  them  their  food.  Then  the  party 
turned  to  the  house.  It  was  an  old,  six- 
teenth century  building,  with  the  singular 
round,  ''Flemish"  chimney  that  is  character- 
istic of  Meirion.  The  walls  were  snowy 
with  whitewash,  the  windows  were  deeply 
set  and  stone  mullioned,  and  a  solid,  stone- 
tiled  porch  sheltered  the  doorway  from  any 
winds  that  might  penetrate  to  the  hollow  of 
that  hidden  valley.  The  windows  were  shut 
tight.  There  was  no  sign  of  any  life  or 
movement  about  the  place.  The  party  of 
men  looked  at  one  another,  and  the  church- 
warden amongst  the  farmers,  the  sergeant 
of  police,  Lewis,  and  the  corporal  drew  to- 
gether. 

"What  is  it  to  goodness,  doctor?"  said  the 
churchwarden. 

"I  can  tell  you  nothing  at  all — except  that 
that  poor  man  there  has  been  pierced  to  the 
heart,"  said  Lewis. 

"Do  you  think  they  are  inside  and  they 
[165] 


The  Terror 

will  shoot  us?"  said  another  farmer.  He 
had  no  notion  of  what  he  meant  by  "they," 
and  no  one  of  them  knew  better  than  he. 
They  did  not  know  what  the  danger  was, 
or  where  it  might  strike  them,  or  whether 
it  was  from  without  or  from  within.  They 
stared  at  the  murdered  man,  and  gazed  dis- 
mally at  one  another. 

"Come!"  said  Lewis,  "we  must  do  some- 
thing. We  must  get  into  the  house  and  see 
what  is  wrong." 

"Yes,  but  suppose  they  are  at  us  while  we 
are  getting  in,"  said  the  sergeant.  "Where 
shall  we  be  then,  Doctor  Lewis?" 

The  corporal  put  one  of  his  men  by  the 
gate  at  the  top  of  the  farmyard,  another  at 
the  gate  by  the  bottom  of  the  farmyard,  and 
told  them  to  challenge  and  shoot.  The  doc- 
tor and  the  rest  opened  the  little  gate  of  the 
front  garden  and  went  up  to  the  porch  and 
stood  listening  by  the  door.  It  was  all  dead 
silence.  Lewis  took  an  ash  stick  from  one 
[166] 


The  Terror 

of  the  farmers  and  beat  heavily  three  times 
on  the  old,  black,  oaken  door  studded  with 
antique  nails. 

He  struck  three  thundering  blows,  and 
then  they  all  waited.  There  was  no  answer 
from  within.  He  beat  again,  and  still  si- 
lence. He  shouted  to  the  people  within,  but 
there  was  no  answer.  They  all  turned  and 
looked  at  one  another,  that  party  of  quest 
and  rescue  who  knew  not  what  they  sought, 
what  enemy  they  were  to  encounter.  There 
was  an  iron  ring  on  the  door.  Lewis  turned 
it  but  the  door  stood  fast;  it  was  evidently 
barred  and  bolted.  The  sergeant  of  police 
called  out  to  open,  but  again  there  was  no 
answer. 

They  consulted  together.  There  was 
nothing  for  it  but  to  blow  the  door  open,  and 
some  one  of  them  called  in  a  loud  voice  to 
anybody  that  might  be  within  to  stand  away 
from  the  door,  or  they  would  be  killed. 
And  at  this  very  moment  the  yellow  sheep- 
[167] 


The  Terror 

dog  came  bounding  up  the  yard  from  the 
woods  and  licked  their  hands  and  fawned 
on  them  and  barked  joyfully. 

"Indeed  now,"  said  one  of  the  farmers, 
"he  did  know  that  there  was  something 
amiss.  A  pity  it  was,  Thomas  Williams, 
that  we  did  not  follow  him  when  he  implored 
us  last  Sunday." 

The  corporal  motioned  the  rest  of  the 
party  back,  and  they  stood  looking  fearfully 
about  them  at  the  entrance  to  the  porch. 
The  corporal  disengaged  his  bayonet  and 
shot  into  the  keyhole,  calling  out  once  more 
before  he  fired.  He  shot  and  shot  again; 
so  heavy  and  firm  was  the  ancient  door,  so 
stout  its  bolts  and  fastenings.  At  last  he 
had  to  fire  at  the  massive  hinges,  and  then 
they  all  pushed  together  and  the  door  lurched 
open  and  fell  forward.  The  corporal  raised 
his  left  hand  and  stepped  back  a  few  paces. 
He  hailed  his  two  men  at  the  top  and  bottom 
of  the  farmyard.  They  were  all  right,  they 
said.  And  so  the  party  climbed  and  strug- 
[168] 


The  Terror 

gled  over  the  fallen  door  into  the  passage, 
and  into  the  kitchen  of  the  farmhouse. 

Young  Griffith  was  lying  dead  before  the 
hearth,  before  a  dead  fire  of  white  wood 
ashes.  They  went  on  towards  the  "parlor," 
and  in  the  doorway  of  the  room  was  the  body 
of  the  artist,  Secretan,  as  if  he  had  fallen 
in  trying  to  get  to  the  kitchen.  Upstairs 
the  two  women,  Mrs.  Griffith  and  her  daugh- 
ter, a  girl  of  eighteen,  were  lying  together 
on  the  bed  in  the  big  bedroom,  clasped  in 
each  others'  arms. 

They  went  about  the  house,  searched  the 
pantries,  the  back  kitchen  and  the  cellars; 
there  was  no  life  in  it. 

"Look!"  said  Dr.  Lewis,  when  they  came 
back  to  the  big  kitchen,  "look!  It  is  as  if 
they  had  been  besieged.  Do  you  see  that 
piece  of  bacon,  half  gnawed  through?" 

Then  they  found  these  pieces  of  bacon, 
cut  from  the  sides  on  the  kitchen  wall,  here 
and  there  about  the  house.     There  was  no 
bread  in  the  place,  no  milk,  no  water. 
[169] 


The  Terror 

"And,"  said  one  of  the  farmers,  "they  had 
the  best  water  here  in  all  Meirion.  The  well 
is  down  there  in  the  wood ;  it  is  most  famous 
water.  The  old  people  did  use  to  call  it 
Ffynnon  Teilo;  it  was  Saint  Teilo's  Well, 
they  did  say." 

"They  must  have  died  of  thirst,"  said 
Lewis.  "They  have  been  dead  for  days  and 
days." 

The  group  of  men  stood  in  the  big  kitchen 
and  stared  at  one  another,  a  dreadful  per- 
plexity in  their  eyes.  The  dead  were  all 
about  them,  within  the  house  and  without 
it;  and  it  was  in  vain  to  ask  why  they  had 
died  thus.  The  old  man  had  been  killed  with 
the  piercing  thrust  of  some  sharp  weapon; 
the  rest  had  perished,  it  seemed  probable, 
of  thirst;  but  what  possible  enemy  was  this 
that  besieged  the  farm  and  shut  in  its  in- 
habitants? There  was  no  answer. 

The  sergeant  of  police  spoke  of  getting  a 
cart  and  taking  the  bodies  into  Forth,  and 
Dr.  Lewis  went  into  the  parlor  that  Secretan 
[170] 


The  Terror 

had  used  as  a  sitting-room,  intending  to 
gather  any  possessions  or  effects  of  the  dead 
artist  that  he  might  find  there.  Half  a 
dozen  portfolios  were  piled  up  in  one  corner, 
there  were  some  books  on  a  side  table,  a  fish- 
ing-rod and  basket  behind  the  door — that 
seemed  all.  No  doubt  there  would  be  clothes 
and  such  matters  upstairs,  and  Lewis  was 
about  to  rejoin  the  rest  of  the  party  in  the 
kitchen,  when  he  looked  down  at  some  scat- 
tered papers  lying  with  the  books  on  the  side 
table.  On  one  of  the  sheets  he  read  to 
his  astonishment  the  words:  "Dr.  James 
Lewis,  Forth."  This  was  written  in  a  stag- 
gering trembling  scrawl,  and  examining  the 
other  leaves  he  saw  that  they  were  covered 
with  writing. 

The  table  stood  in  a  dark  corner  of  the 
room,  and  Lewis  gathered  up  the  sheets  of 
paper  and  took  them  to  the  window-ledge 
and  began  to  read,  amazed  at  certain  phrases 
that  had  caught  his  eye.  But  the  manu- 
script was  in  disorder ;  as  if  the  dead  man 


The  Terror 

who  had  written  it  had  not  been  equal  to 
the  task  of  gathering  the  leaves  into  their 
proper  sequence;  it  was  some  time  before 
the  doctor  had  each  page  in  its  place.  This 
was  the  statement  that  he  read,  with  ever- 
growing wonder,  while  a  couple  of  the  farm- 
ers were  harnessing  one  of  the  horses  in  the 
yard  to  a  cart,  and  the  others  were  bringing 
down  the  dead  women. 

"I  do  not  think  that  I  can  last  much  longer. 
We  shared  out  the  last  drops  of  water  a 
long  time  ago.  I  do  not  know  how  many 
days  ago.  We  fall  asleep  and  dream  and 
walk  about  the  house  in  our  dreams,  and  I 
am  often  not  sure  whether  I  am  awake  or 
still  dreaming,  and  so  the  days  and  nights 
are  confused  in  my  mind.  I  awoke  not  long 
ago,  at  least  I  suppose  I  awoke  and  found 
I  was  lying  in  the  passage.  I  had  a  con- 
fused feeling  that  I  had  had  an  awful  dream 
which  seemed  horribly  real,  and  I  thought 
for  a  moment  what  a  relief  it  was  to  know 
[172] 


The  Terror 

that  it  wasn't  true,  whatever  it  might  have 
been.  I  made  up  my  mind  to  have  a  good 
long  walk  to  freshen  myself  up,  and  then  I 
looked  round  and  found  that  I  had  been  lying 
on  the  stones  of  the  passage ;  and  it  all  came 
back  to  me.  There  was  no  walk  for  me. 

"I  have  not  seen  Mrs.  Griffith  or  her 
daughter  for  a  long  while.  They  said  they 
were  going  upstairs  to  have  a  rest.  I  heard 
them  moving  about  the  room  at  first,  now 
I  can  hear  nothing.  Young  Griffith  is  lying 
in  the  kitchen,  before  the  hearth.  He  was 
talking  to  himself  about  the  harvest  and  the 
weather  when  I  last  went  into  the  kitchen. 
He  didn't  seem  to  know  I  was  there,  as  he 
went  gabbling  on  in  a  low  voice  very  fast, 
and  then  he  began  to  call  the  dog,  Tiger. 

"There  seems  no  hope  for  any  of  us.  We 
are  in  the  dream  of  death  .  .  ." 

Here  the  manuscript  became  unintelligible 
for  half  a  dozen  lines.  Secretan  had  writ- 
ten the  words  "dream  of  death"  three  or  four 
times  over.  He  had  begun  a  fresh  word  and 
[173] 


The  Terror 

had  scratched  it  out  and  then  followed 
strange,  unmeaning  characters,  the  script,  as 
Lewis  thought,  of  a  terrible  language.  And 
then  the  writing  became  clear,  clearer  than  it 
was  at  the  beginning  of  the  manuscript,  and 
the  sentences  flowed  more  easily,  as  if  the 
cloud  on  Secretan's  mind  had  lifted  for  a 
while.  There  was  a  fresh  start,  as  it  were, 
and  the  writer  began  again,  in  ordinary  let- 
ter-form : 

"DEAR  LEWIS, 

"I  hope  you  will  excuse  all  this  confusion 
and  wandering.  I  intended  to  begin  a 
proper  letter  to  you,  and  now  I  find  all  that 
stuff  that  you  have  been  reading — if  this 
ever  gets  into  your  hands.  I  have  not  the 
energy  even  to  tear  it  up.  If  you  read  it 
you  will  know  to  what  a  sad  pass  I  had  come 
when  it  was  written.  It  looks  like  delirium 
or  a  bad  dream,  and  even  now,  though  my 
mind  seems  to  have  cleared  up  a  good  deal, 
I  have  to  hold  myself  in  tightly  to  be  sure 
[174] 


The  Terror 

that  the  experiences  of  the  last  days  in  this 
awful  place  are  true,  real  things,  not  a  long 
nightmare  from  which  I  shall  wake  up  pres- 
ently and  find  myself  in  my  rooms  at  Chel- 
sea. 

"I  have  said  of  what  I  am  writing,  'if  it 
ever  gets  into  your  hands,'  and  I  am  not  at 
all  sure  that  it  ever  will.  If  what  is  hap- 
pening here  is  happening  everywhere  else, 
then  I  suppose,  the  world  is  coming  to  an 
end.  I  cannot  understand  it,  even  now  I 
can  hardly  believe  it.  I  know  that  I  dream 
such  wild  dreams  and  walk  in  such  mad 
fancies  that  I  have  to  look  out  and  look  about 
me  to  make  sure  that  I  am  not  still  dream- 
ing. 

"Do  you  remember  that  talk  we  had  about 
two  months  ago  when  I  dined  with  you? 
We  got  on,  somehow  or  other,  to  space  and 
time,  and  I  think  we  agreed  that  as  soon  as 
one  tried  to  reason  about  space  and  time  one 
was  landed  in  a  maze  of  contradictions. 
You  said  something  to  the  effect  that  it  was 
[175] 


The  Terror 

very  curious  but  this  was  just  like  a  dream. 
'A  man  will  sometimes  wake  himself  from 
his  crazy  dream/  you  said,  'by  realizing  that 
he  is  thinking  nonsense.'  And  we  both  won- 
dered whether  these  contradictions  that  one 
can't  avoid  if  one  begins  to  think  of  time 
and  space  may  not  really  be  proofs  that  the 
whole  of  life  is  a  dream,  and  the  moon  and 
the  stars  bits  of  nightmare.  I  have  often 
thought  over  that  lately.  I  kick  at  the  walls 
as  Dr.  Johnson  kicked  at  the  stone,  to  make 
sure  that  the  things  about  me  are  there. 
And  then  that  other  question  gets  into  my 
mind — is  the  world  really  coming  to  an  end, 
the  world  as  we  have  always  known  it ;  and 
what  on  earth  will  this  new  world  be  like? 
I  can't  imagine  it ;  it's  a  story  like  Noah's  Ark 
and  the  Flood.  People  used  to  talk  about 
the  end  of  the  world  and  fire,  but  no  one 
ever  thought  of  anything  like  this. 

"And   then   there's    another    thing   that 
bothers    me.     Now    and    then    I    wonder 
whether  we  are  not  all  mad  together  in  this 
[176] 


The  Terror 

house.  In  spite  of  what  I  see  and  know,  or, 
perhaps,  I  should  say,  because  what  I  see 
and  know  is  so  impossible,  I  wonder  whether 
we  are  not  all  suffering  from  a  delusion. 
Perhaps  we  are  our  own  gaolers,  and  we  are 
really  free  to  go  out  and  live.  Perhaps  what 
we  think  we  see  is  not  there  at  all.  I  be- 
lieve I  have  heard  of  whole  families  going 
mad  together,  and  I  may  have  come  under 
the  influence  of  the  house,  having  lived  in  it 
for  the  last  four  months.  I  know  there  have 
been  people  who  have  been  kept  alive  by  their 
keepers  forcing  food  down  their  throats,  be- 
cause they  are  quite  sure  that  their  throats 
are  closed,  so  that  they  feel  they  are  unable 
to  swallow  a  morsel.  I  wonder  now  and 
then  whether  we  are  all  like  this  in  Treff 
Loyne;  yet  in  my  heart  I  feel  sure  that  it  is 
not  so. 

"Still,  I  do  not  want  to  leave  a  madman's 

letter  behind  me,  and  so  I  will  not  tell  you 

the  full  story  of  what  I  have  seen,  or  believe 

I  have  seen.     If  I  am  a  sane  man  you  will  be 

[177] 


The  Terror 

able  to  fill  in  the  blanks  for  yourself  from 
your  own  knowledge.  If  I  am  mad,  burn 
the  letter  and  say  nothing  about  it.  Or  per- 
haps— and  indeed,  I  am  not  quite  sure — I 
may  wake  up  and  hear  Mary  Griffith  calling 
to  me  in  her  cheerful  sing-song  that  break- 
fast will  be  ready  'directly,  in  a  minute,'  and 
I  shall  enjoy  it  and  walk  over  to  Forth  and 
tell  you  the  queerest,  most  horrible  dream 
that  a  man  ever  had,  and  ask  what  I  had  bet- 
ter take. 

"I  think  that  it  was  on  a  Tuesday  that  we 
first  noticed  that  there  was  something  queer 
about,  only  at  the  time  we  didn't  know  that 
there  was  anything  really  queer  in  what  we 
noticed.  I  had  been  out  since  nine  o'clock 
in  the  morning  trying  to  paint  the  marsh, 
and  I  found  it  a  very  tough  job.  I  came 
home  about  five  or  six  o'clock  and  found  the 
family  at  Treff  Loyne  laughing  at  old  Tiger, 
the  sheepdog.  He  was  making  short  runs 
from  the  farmyard  to  the  door  of  the  house, 
barking,  with  quick,  short  yelps.  Mrs.  Grif- 


The  Terror 

fith  and  Miss  Griffith  were  standing  by  the 
porch,  and  the  dog  would  go  to  them,  look  in 
their  faces,  and  then  run  up  the  farmyard 
to  the  gate,  and  then  look  back  with  that 
eager  yelping  bark,  as  if  he  were  waiting  for 
the  women  to  follow  him.  Then,  again  and 
again,  he  ran  up  to  them  and  tugged  at  their 
skirts  as  if  he  would  pull  them  by  main  force 
away  from  the  house. 

"Then  the  men  came  home  from  the  fields 
and  he  repeated  this  performance.  The  dog 
was  running  all  up  and  down  the  farmyard, 
in  and  out  of  the  barn  and  sheds  yelping, 
barking;  and  always  with  that  eager  run  to 
the  person  he  addressed,  and  running  away 
directly,  and  looking  back  as  if  to  see  whether 
we  were  following  him.  When  the  house- 
door  was  shut  and  they  all  sat  down  to  sup- 
per, he  would  give  them  no  peace,  till  at  last 
they  turned  him  out  of  doors.  And  then  he 
sat  in  the  porch  and  scratched  at  the  door 
with  his  claws,  barking  all  the  while.  When 
the  daughter  brought  in  my  meal,  she  said: 
[179] 


The  Terror 

'We  can't  think  what  is  come  to  old  Tiger, 
and  indeed,  he  has  always  been  a  good  dog, 
too/ 

"The  dog  barked  and  yelped  and  whined 
and  scratched  at  the  door  all  through  the 
evening.  They  let  him  in  once,  but  he 
seemed  to  have  become  quite  frantic.  He 
ran  up  to  one  member  of  the  family  after 
another;  his  eyes  were  bloodshot  and  his 
mouth  was  foaming,  and  he  tore  at  their 
clothes  till  they  drove  him  out  again  into 
the  darkness.  Then  he  broke  into  a  long, 
lamentable  howl  of  anguish,  and  we  heard 
no  more  of  him." 


[180] 


CHAPTER  XIII  The  Last  Words 

of  Mr.  Secretan 

"  TT  SLEPT  ill  that  night.  I  awoke 
g  again  and  again  from  uneasy 
i.  dreams,  and  I  seemed  in  my  sleep 
to  hear  strange  calls  and  noises  and  a  sound 
of  murmurs  and  beatings  on  the  door. 
There  were  deep,  hollow  voices,  too,  that 
echoed  in  my  sleep,  and  when  I  woke  I  could 
hear  the  autumn  wind,  mournful,  on  the  hills 
above  us.  I  started  up  once  with  a  dreadful 
scream  in  my  ears;  but  then  the  house  was 
all  still,  and  I  fell  again  into  uneasy  sleep. 
"It  was  soon  after  dawn  when  I  finally 
roused  myself.  The  people  in  the  house 
were  talking  to  each  other  in  high  voices, 
arguing  about  something  that  I  did  not  un- 
derstand. 

E  'It  is  those  damned  gipsies,  I  tell  you/ 
said  old  Griffith. 

[181] 


The  Terror 

"  'What  would  they  do  a  thing  like  that 
for?'  asked  Mrs.  Griffith.  'If  it  was  steal- 
ing now — ' ' 

'  'It  is  more  likely  that  John  Jenkins  has 
done  it  out  of  spite/  said  the  son.  'He  said 
that  he  would  remember  you  when  we  did 
catch  him  poaching/ 

"They  seemed  puzzled  and  angry,  so  far 
as  I  could  make  out,  but  not  at  all  fright- 
ened. I  got  up  and  began  to  dress.  I  don't 
think  I  looked  out  of  the  window.  The  glass 
on  my  dressing-table  is  high  and  broad,  and 
the  window  is  small ;  one  would  have  to  poke 
one's  head  round  the  glass  to  see  anything. 

"The  voices  were  still  arguing  downstairs. 
I  heard  the  old  man  say,  'Well,  here's  for 
a  beginning  anyhow/  and  then  the  door 
slammed. 

"A  minute  later  the  old  man  shouted,  I 
think,  to  his  son.  Then  there  was  a  great 
noise  which  I  will  not  describe  more  par- 
ticularly, and  a  dreadful  screaming  and  cry- 
ing inside  the  house  and  a  sound  of  rushing 
[182] 


The  Terror 

feet.  They  all  cried  out  at  once  to  each 
other.  I  heard  the  daughter  crying,  'it  is  no 
good,  mother,  he  is  dead,  indeed  they  have 
killed  him/  and  Mrs.  Griffith  screaming  to 
the  girl  to  let  her  go.  And  then  one  of  them 
rushed  out  of  the  kitchen  and  shot  the  great 
bolts  of  oak  across  the  door,  just  as  some- 
thing beat  against  it  with  a  thundering  crash. 

"I  ran  downstairs.  I  found  them  all  in 
wild  confusion,  in  an  agony  of  grief  and 
horror  and  amazement.  They  were  like  peo- 
ple who  had  seen  something  so  awful  that 
they  had  gone  mad. 

"I  went  to  the  window  looking  out  on  the 
farmyard.  I  won't  tell  you  all  that  I  saw. 
But  I  saw  poor  old  Griffith  lying  by  the  pond, 
with  the  blood  pouring  out  of  his  side. 

"I  wanted  to  go  out  to  him  and  bring  him 
in.  But  they  told  me  that  he  must  be  stone 
dead,  and  such  things  also  that  it  was  quite 
plain  that  any  one  who  went  out  of  the  house 
would  not  live  more  than  a  moment.  We 
could  not  believe  it,  even  as  we  gazed  at  the 
[183] 


The  Terror 

body  of  the  dead  man;  but  it  was  there.  I 
used  to  wonder  sometimes  what  one  would 
feel  like  if  one  saw  an  apple  drop  from  the 
tree  and  shoot  up  into  the  air  and  disappear. 
I  think  I  know  now  how  one  would  feel. 

"Even  then  we  couldn't  believe  that  it 
would  last.  We  were  not  seriously  afraid 
for  ourselves.  We  spoke  of  getting  out  in 
an  hour  or  two,  before  dinner  anyhow.  It 
couldn't  last,  because  it  was  impossible.  In- 
deed, at  twelve  o'clock  young  Griffith  said 
he  would  go  down  to  the  well  by  the  back 
way  and  draw  another  pail  of  water.  I  went 
to  the  door  and  stood  by  it.  He  had  not 
gone  a  dozen  yards  before  they  were  on  him. 
He  ran  for  his  life,  and  we  had  all  we  could 
do  to  bar  the  door  in  time.  And  then  I  be- 
gan to  get  frightened. 

"Still  we  could  not  believe  in  it.  Some- 
body would  come  along  shouting  in  an  hour 
or  two  and  it  would  all  melt  away  and  vanish. 
There  could  not  be  any  real  danger.  There 
was  plenty  of  bacon  in  the  house,  and  half 
[184] 


The  Terror 

the  weekly  baking  of  loaves  and  some  beer 
in  the  cellar  and  a  pound  or  so  of  tea,  and  a 
whole  pitcher  of  water  that  had  been  drawn 
from  the  well  the  night  before.  We  could 
do  all  right  for  the  day  and  in  the  morning 
it  would  have  all  gone  away. 

"But  day  followed  day  and  it  was  still 
there.  I  knew  Treff  Loyne  was  a  lonely 
place — that  was  why  I  had  gone  there,  to 
have  a  long  rest  from  all  the  jangle  and  rat- 
tle and  turmoil  of  London,  that  makes  a  man 
alive  and  kills  him  too.  I  went  to  Treff 
Loyne  because  it  was  buried  in  the  narrow 
valley  under  the  ash  trees,  far  away  from 
any  track.  There  was  not  so  much  as  a 
footpath  that  was  near  it;  no  one  ever  came 
that  way.  Young  Griffith  had  told  me  that 
it  was  a  mile  and  a  half  to  the  nearest  house, 
and  the  thought  of  the  silent  peace  and  re- 
tirement of  the  farm  used  to  be  a  delight 
to  me. 

"And  now  this  thought  came  back  with- 
out delight,  with  terror.  Griffith  thought 
[185] 


The  Terror 

that  a  shout  might  be  heard  on  a  still  night 
up  away  on  the  Allt,  'if  a  man  was  listening 
for  it,'  he  added,  doubtfully.  My  voice  was 
clearer  and  stronger  than  his,  and  on  the 
second  night  I  said  I  would  go  up  to  my 
bedroom  and  call  for  help  through  the  open 
window.  I  waited  till  it  was  all  dark  and 
still,  and  looked  out  through  the  window  be- 
fore opening  it.  And  then  I  saw  over  the 
ridge  of  the  long  barn  across  the  yard  what 
looked  like  a  tree,  though  I  knew  there  was 
no  tree  there.  It  was  a  dark  mass  against 
the  sky,  with  wide-spread  boughs,  a  tree  of 
thick,  dense  growth.  I  wondered  what  this 
could  be,  and  I  threw  open  the  window,  not 
only  because  I  was  going  to  call  for  help, 
but  because  I  wanted  to  see  more  clearly 
what  the  dark  growth  over  the  barn  really 
was. 

"I  saw  in  the  depth  of  the  dark  of  it 
points  of  fire,  and  colors  in  light,  all  glow- 
ing and  moving,  and  the  air  trembled.     I 
stared  out  into  the  night,  and  the  dark  tree 
[186] 


The  Terror 

lifted  over  the  roof  of  the  barn  and  rose  up 
in  the  air  and  floated  towards  me.  I  did 
not  move  till  at  the  last  moment  when  it  was 
close  to  the  house;  and  then  I  saw  what  it 
was  and  banged  the  window  down  only  just 
in  time.  I  had  to  fight,  and  I  saw  the  tree 
that  was  like  a  burning  cloud  rise  up  in  the 
night  and  sink  again  and  settle  over  the 
barn. 

"I  told  them  downstairs  of  this.  They 
sat  with  white  faces,  and  Mrs.  Griffith  said 
that  ancient  devils  were  let  loose  and  had 
come  out  of  the  trees  and  out  of  the  old  hills 
because  of  the  wickedness  that  was  on  the 
earth.  She  began  to  murmur  something  to 
herself,  something  that  sounded  to  me  like 
broken-down  Latin. 

"I  went  up  to  my  room  again  an  hour 
later,  but  the  dark  tree  swelled  over  the  barn. 
Another  day  went  by,  and  at  dusk  I  looked 
out,  but  the  eyes  of  fire  were  watching  me. 
I  dared  not  open  the  window. 

"And  then  I  thought  of  another  plan. 
[187] 


The  Terror 

There  was  the  great  old  fireplace,  with  the 
round  Flemish  chimney  going  high  above 
the  house.  If  I  stood  beneath  it  and  shouted 
I  thought  perhaps  the  sound  might  be  car- 
ried better  than  if  I  called  out  of  the  win- 
dow ;  for  all  I  knew  the  round  chimney  might 
act  as  a  sort  of  megaphone.  Night  after 
night,  then,  I  stood  in  the  hearth  and  called 
for  help  from  nine  o'clock  to  eleven.  I 
thought  of  the  lonely  place,  deep  in  the  val- 
ley of  the  ashtrees,  of  the  lonely  hills  and 
lands  about  it.  I  thought  of  the  little  cot- 
tages far  away  and  hoped  that  my  voice 
might  reach  to  those  within  them.  I 
thought  of  the  winding  lane  high  on  the 
Allt,  and  of  the  few  men  that  came  there  of 
nights ;  but  I  hoped  that  my  cry  might  come 
to  one  of  them. 

"But  we  had  drunk  up  the  beer,  and  we 
would  only  let  ourselves  have  water  by  little 
drops,  and  on  the  fourth  night  my  throat 
was  dry,  and  I  began  to  feel  strange  and 
weak;  I  knew  that  all  the  voice  I  had  in  my 
[£88] 


The  Terror 

lungs  would  hardly  reach  the  length  of  the 
field  by  the  farm. 

"It  was  then  we  began  to  dream  of  wells 
and  fountains,  and  water  coming  very  cold, 
in  little  drops,  out  of  rocky  places  in  the  mid- 
dle of  a  cool  wood.  We  had  given  up  all 
meals;  now  and  then  one  would  cut  a  lump 
from  the  sides  of  bacon  on  the  kitchen  wall 
and  chew  a  bit  of  it,  but  the  saltness  was  like 
fire. 

"There  was  a  great  shower  of  rain  one 
night.  The  girl  said  we  might  open  a  win- 
dow and  hold  out  bowls  and  basins  and  catch 
the  rain.  I  spoke  of  the  cloud  with  burning 
eyes.  She  said  'we  will  go  to  the  window  in 
the  dairy  at  the  back,  and  one  of  us  can  get 
some  water  at  all  events.'  She  stood  up 
with  her  basin  on  the  stone  slab  in  the  dairy 
and  looked  out  and  heard  the  plashing  of  the 
rain,  falling  very  fast.  And  she  unfastened 
the  catch  of  the  window  and  had  just  opened 
it  gently  with  one  hand,  for  about  an  inch, 
and  had  her  basin  in  the  other  hand.  'And 
[189] 


The  Terror 

then,'  said  she,  'there  was  something  that 
began  to  tremble  and  shudder  and  shake  as 
it  did  when  we  went  to  the  Choral  Festival 
at  St.  Teilo's,  and  the  organ  played,  and 
there  was  the  cloud  and  the  burning  close 
before  me.' 

"And  then  we  began  to  dream,  as  I  say. 
I  woke  up  in  my  sitting-room  one  hot  after- 
noon when  the  sun  was  shining,  and  I  had 
been  looking  and  searching  in  my  dream  all 
through  the  house,  and  I  had  gone  down  to 
the  old  cellar  that  wasn't  used,  the  cellar  with 
the  pillars  and  the  vaulted  room,  with  an 
iron  pike  in  my  hand.  Something  said  to 
me  that  there  was  water  there,  and  in  my 
dream  I  went  to  a  heavy  stone  by  the  middle 
pillar  and  raised  it  up,  and  there  beneath  was 
a  bubbling  well  of  cold,  clear  water,  and  I 
had  just  hollowed  my  hand  to  drink  it  when 
I  woke.  I  went  into  the  kitchen  and  told 
young  Griffith.  I  said  I  was  sure  there  was 
water  there.  He  shook  his  head,  but  he  took 
up  the  great  kitchen  poker  and  we  went  down 
[190] 


The  Terror 

to  the  old  cellar.  I  showed  him  the  stone  by 
the  pillar,  and  he  raised  it  up.  But  there 
was  no  well. 

"Do  you  know,  I  reminded  myself  of  many 
people  whom  I  have  met  in  life?  I  would 
not  be  convinced.  I  was  sure  that,  after  all, 
there  was  a  well  there.  They  had  a  butch- 
er's cleaver  in  the  kitchen  and  I  took  it  down 
to  the  old  cellar  and  hacked  at  the  ground 
with  it.  The  others  didn't  interfere  with 
me.  We  were  getting  past  that.  We 
hardly  ever  spoke  to  one  another.  Each  one 
would  be  wandering  about  the  house,  up- 
stairs and  downstairs,  each  one  of  us,  I  sup- 
pose, bent  on  his  own  foolish  plan  and  mad 
design,  but  we  hardly  ever  spoke.  Years 
ago,  I  was  an  actor  for  a  bit,  and  I  remem- 
ber how  it  was  on  first  nights;  the  actors 
treading  softly  up  and  down  the  wings,  by 
their  entrance,  their  lips  moving  and  mut- 
tering over  the  words  of  their  parts,  but 
without  a  word  for  one  another.  So  it  was 
with  us.  I  came  upon  young  Griffith  one 
[191] 


The  Terror 

evening  evidently  trying  to  make  a  subter- 
ranean passage  under  one  of  the  walls  of 
the  house.  I  knew  he  was  mad,  as  he  knew 
I  was  mad  when  he  saw  me  digging  for  a 
well  in  the  cellar;  but  neither  said  anything 
to  the  other. 

"Now  we  are  past  all  this.  We  are  too 
weak.  We  dream  when  we  are  awake  and 
when  we  dream  we  think  we  wake.  Night 
and  day  come  and  go  and  we  mistake  one 
for  another;  I  hear  Griffith  murmuring  to 
himself  about  the  stars  when  the  sun  is  high 
at  noonday,  and  at  midnight  I  have  found 
myself  thinking  that  I  walked  in  bright  sun- 
lit meadows  beside  cold,  rushing  streams  that 
flowed  from  high  rocks. 

"Then  at  the  dawn  figures  in  black  robes, 
carrying  lighted  tapers  in  their  hands  pass 
slowly  about  and  about;  and  I  hear  great 
rolling  organ  music  that  sounds  as  if  some 
tremendous  rite  were  to  begin,  and  voices 
crying  in  an  ancient  song  shrill  from  the 
depths  of  the  earth. 

[192] 


The  Terror 

"Only  a  little  while  ago  I  heard  a  voice 
which  sounded  as  if  it  were  at  my  very  ears, 
but  rang  and  echoed  and  resounded  as  if 
it  were  rolling  and  reverberated  from  the 
vault  of  some  cathedral,  chanting  in  terrible 
modulations.  I  heard  the  words  quite 
clearly. 

"Incipit  liber  ires  Domini  Dei  nostri. 
(Here  beginneth  The  Book  of  the  Wrath  of 
the  Lord  our  God. 

"And  then  the  voice  sang  the  word  Aleph, 
prolonging  it,  it  seemed  through  ages,  and 
a  light  was  extinguished  as  it  began  the 
chapter : 

"In  that  day,  saith  the  Lord,  there  shall  be 
a  child  over  the  land,  and  in  the  cloud  a 
burning  and  a  shape  of  fire,  and  out  of  the 
cloud  shall  issue  forth  my  messengers;  they 
shall  run  all  together,  they  shall  not  turn 
aside;  this  shall  be  a  day  of  exceeding  bitter- 
ness, without  salvation.  And  on  every  high 
hill,  saith  the  Lord  of  Hosts,  I  will  set  my 


The  Terror 

sentinels,  and  my  armies  shall  encamp  in  the 
place  of  every  valley;  in  the  house  that  is 
amongst  rushes  I  will  execute  judgment,  and 
in  vain  shall  they  fly  for  refuge  to  the  muni- 
tions of  the  rocks.  In  the  groves  of  the 
woods,  in  the  places  where  the  leaves  are  as 
a  tent  above  them,  they  shall  find  the  sword 
of  the  slayer;  and  they  that  put  their  trust 
in  walled  cities  shall  be  confounded.  Woe 
unto  the  armed  man,  woe  unto  him  that 
taketh  pleasure  in  the  strength  of  his  artil- 
lery, for  a  little  thing  shall  smite  him,  and 
by  one  that  hath  no  might  shall  he  be  brought 
down  into  the  dust.  That  which  is  low  shall 
be  set  on  high;  I  will  make  the  lamb  and  the 
young  sheep  to  be  as  the  lion  from  the  swell- 
ings of  Jordan;  they  shall  not  spare,  saith 
the  Lord,  and  the  doves  shall  be  as  eagles  on 
the  hill  Engedi;  none  shall  be  found  that  may 
abide  the  onset  of  their  battle. 

"Even  now  I  can  hear  the  voice  rolling  far 
away,  as  if  it  came  from  the  altar  of  a  great 
[194] 


The  Terror 

church  and  I  stood  at  the  door.  There  are 
lights  very  far  away  in  the  hollow  of  a  vast 
darkness,  and  one  by  one  they  are  put  out. 
I  hear  a  voice  chanting  again  with  that  end- 
less modulation  that  climbs  and  aspires  to 
the  stars,  and  shines  there,  and  rushes  down 
to  the  dark  depths  of  the  earth,  again  to 
ascend;  the  word  is  Zain." 

Here  the  manuscript  lapsed  again,  and 
finally  into  utter,  lamentable  confusion. 
There  were  scrawled  lines  wavering  across 
the  page  on  which  Secretan  seemed  to  have 
been  trying  to  note  the  unearthly  music  that 
swelled  in  his  dying  ears.  As  the  scrapes 
and  scratches  of  ink  showed,  he  had  tried 
hard  to  begin  a  new  sentence.  The  pen  had 
dropped  at  last  out  of  his  hand  upon  the 
paper,  leaving  a  blot  and  a  smear  upon  it. 

Lewis  heard  the  tramp  of  feet  along  the 
passage;  they  were  carrying  out  the  dead  to 
the  cart. 

[195] 


CHAPTER  XIV  The  End  of 

the  Terror 

DR.   LEWIS   maintained   that   we 
should  never  begin  to  understand 
the  real  significance  of  life  until 
we  began  to  study  just  those  aspects  of  it 
which  we  now  dismiss  and  overlook  as  ut- 
terly inexplicable,  and  therefore,  unimpor- 
tant. 

We  were  discussing  a  few  months  ago 
the  awful  shadow  of  the  terror  which  at 
length  had  passed  away  from  the  land.  I 
had  formed  my  opinion,  partly  from  ob- 
servation, partly  from  certain  facts  which 
had  been  communicated  to  me,  and  the  pass- 
words having  been  exchanged,  I  found  that 
Lewis  had  come  by  very  different  ways  to 
the  same  end. 

"And  yet,"  he  said,  "it  is  not  a  true  end, 
[196] 


The  Terror 

or  rather,  it  is  like  all  the  ends  of  human 
inquiry,  it  leads  one  to  a  great  mystery.  We 
must  confess  that  what  has  happened  might 
have  happened  at  any  time  in  the  history  of 
the  world.  It  did  not  happen  till  a  year  ago 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  and  therefore  we  made 
up  our  minds  that  it  never  could  happen ;  or, 
one  would  better  say,  it  was  outside  the 
range  even  of  imagination.  But  this  is  our 
way.  Most  people  are  quite  sure  that  the 
Black  Death — otherwise  the  Plague — will 
never  invade  Europe  again.  They  have 
made  up  their  complacent  minds  that  it  was 
due  to  dirt  and  bad  drainage.  As  a  matter 
of  fact  the  Plague  had  nothing  to  do  with 
dirt  or  with  drains;  and  there  is  nothing  to 
prevent  its  ravaging  England  to-morrow. 
But  if  you  tell  people  so,  they  won't  believe 
you.  They  won't  believe  in  anything  that 
isn't  there  at  the  particular  moment  when 
you  are  talking  to  them.  As  with  the 
Plague,  so  with  the  Terror.  We  could  not 
believe  that  such  a  thing  could  ever  happen. 
[197] 


The  Terror 

Remnant  said,  truly  enough,  that  whatever 
it  was,  it  was  outside  theory,  outside  our 
theory.  Flatland  cannot  believe  in  the  cube 
or  the  sphere." 

I  agreed  with  all  this.  I  added  that  some- 
times the  world  was  incapable  of  seeing, 
much  less  believing,  that  which  was  before 
its  own  eyes. 

"Look,"  I  said,  "at  any  eighteenth  cen- 
tury print  of  a  Gothic  cathedral.  You  will 
find  that  the  trained  artistic  eye  even  could 
not  behold  in  any  true  sense  the  building  that 
was  before  it.  I  have  seen  an  old  print  of 
Peterborough  Cathedral  that  looks  as  if  the 
artist  had  drawn  it  from  a  clumsy  model, 
constructed  of  bent  wire  and  children's 
bricks. 

"Exactly;  because  Gothic  was  outside  the 
aesthetic  theory  (and  therefore  vision)  of 
the  time.  You  can't  believe  what  you  don't 
see:  rather,  you  can't  see  what  you  don't 
believe.  It  was  so  during  the  time  of  the 
Terror.  All  this  bears  out  what  Coleridge 
[198] 


The  Terror 

said  as  to  the  necessity  of  having  the  idea 
before  the  facts  could  be  of  any  service  to 
one.  Of  course,  he  was  right;  mere  facts, 
without  the  correlating  idea,  are  nothing  and 
lead  to  no  conclusion.  We  had  plenty  of 
facts,  but  we  could  make  nothing  of  them. 
I  went  home  at  the  tail  of  that  dreadful  pro- 
cession from  Treff  Loyne  in  a  state  of  mind 
very  near  to  madness.  I  heard  one  of  the 
soldiers  saying  to  the  other:  'There's  no 
rat  that'll  spike  a  man  to  the  heart,  Bill.'  I 
don't  know  why,  but  I  felt  that  if  I  heard 
any  more  of  such  talk  as  that  I  should  go 
crazy;  it  seemed  to  me  that  the  anchors  of 
reason  were  parting.  I  left  the  party  and 
took  the  short  cut  across  the  fields  into  Forth. 
I  looked  up  Davies  in  the  High  Street  and 
arranged  with  him  that  he  should  take  on 
any  cases  I  might  have  that  evening,  and 
then  I  went  home  and  gave  my  man  his  in- 
structions to  send  people  on.  And  then  I 
shut  myself  up  to  think  it  all  out — if  I 
could. 

[199] 


The  Terror 

"You  must  not  suppose  that  my  experi- 
ences of  that  afternoon  had  afforded  me  the 
slightest  illumination.  Indeed,  if  it  had  not 
been  that  I  had  seen  poor  old  Griffith's  body 
lying  pierced  in  his  own  farmyard,  I  think 
I  should  have  been  inclined  to  accept  one 
of  Secretan's  hints,  and  to  believe  that  the 
whole  family  had  fallen  a  victim  to  a  col- 
lective delusion  or  hallucination,  and  had 
shut  themselves  up  and  died  of  thirst  through 
sheer  madness.  I  think  there  have  been 
such  cases.  It's  the  insanity  of  inhibition, 
the  belief  that  you  can't  do  something  which 
you  are  really  perfectly  capable  of  doing. 
But;  I  had  seen  the  body  of  the  murdered 
man  and  the  wound  that  had  killed  him. 

"Did  the  manuscript  left  by  Secretan  give 
me  no  hint  ?  We]l,  it  seemed  to  me  to  make 
confusion  worse  confounded.  You  have 
seen  it;  you  know  that  in  certain  places  it  is 
evidently  mere  delirium,  the  wanderings  of 
a  dying  mind.  How  was  I  to  separate  the 
facts  from  the  phantasms — lacking  the  key 
[200] 


The  Terror 

to  the  whole  enigma.  Delirium  is  often  a 
sort  of  cloud-castle,  a  sort  of  magnified  and 
distorted  shadow  of  actualities,  but  it  is  a 
very  difficult  thing,  almost  an  impossible 
thing,  to  reconstruct  the  real  house  from  the 
distortion  of  it,  thrown  on  the  clouds  of  the 
patient's  brain.  You  see,  Secretan  in  writ- 
ing that  extraordinary  document  almost  in- 
sisted on  the  fact  that  he  was  not  in  his 
proper  sense ;  that  for  days  he  had  been  part 
asleep,  part  awake,  part  delirious.  How 
was  one  to  judge  his  statement,  to  separate 
delirium  from  fact?  In  one  thing  he  stood 
confirmed;  you  remember  he  speaks  of  call- 
ing for  help  up  the  old  chimney  of  Treff 
Loyne;  that  did  seem  to  fit  in  with  the  tales 
of  a  hollow,  moaning  cry  that  had  been  heard 
upon  the  Allt :  so  far  one  could  take  him  as 
a  recorder  of  actual  experiences.  And  I 
looked  in  the  old  cellars  of  the  farm  and 
found  a  frantic  sort  of  rabbit-hole  dug  by 
one  of  the  pillars;  again  he  was  confirmed. 
But  what  was  one  to  make  of  that  story  of 

[201] 


The  Terror 

the  chanting  voice,  and  the  letters  of  the 
Hebrew  alphabet,  and  the  chapter  out  of 
some  unknown  Minor  Prophet?  When  one 
has  the  key  it  is  easy  enough  to  sort  out  the 
facts,  or  the  hints  of  facts  from  the  delu- 
sions; but  I  hadn't  the  key  on  that  Septem- 
ber evening.  I  was  forgetting  the  'tree' 
with  lights  and  fires  in  it;  that,  I  think,  im- 
pressed me  more  than  anything  with  the  feel- 
ing that  Secretan's  story  was,  in  the  main, 
a  true  story.  I  had  seen  a  like  appearance 
down  there  in  my  own  garden;  but  what 
was  it? 

"Now,  I  was  saying  that,  paradoxically, 
it  is  only  by  the  inexplicable  things  that  life 
can  be  explained.  We  are  apt  to  say,  you 
know,  'a  very  odd  coincidence'  and  pass  the 
matter  by,  as  if  there  were  no  more  to  be 
said,  or  as  if  that  were  the  end  of  it.  Well, 
I  believe  that  the  only  real  path  lies  through 
the  blind  alleys." 

"How  do  you  mean?" 

'Well,  this  is  an  instance  of  what  I  mean. 

[202] 


The  Terror 

I  told  you  about  Merritt,  my  brother-in-law, 
and  the  capsizing  of  that  boat,  the  Mary 
Ann.  He  had  seen,  he  said,  signal  lights 
flashing  from  one  of  the  farms  on  the  coast, 
and  he  was  quite  certain  that  the  two  things 
were  intimately  connected  as  cause  and  ef- 
fect. I  thought  it  all  nonsense,  and  I  was 
wondering  how  I  was  going  to  shut  him  up 
when  a  big  moth  flew  into  the  room  through 
that  window,  fluttered  about,  and  succeeded 
in  burning  itself  alive  in  the  lamp.  That 
gave  me  my  cue ;  I  asked  Merritt  if  he  knew 
why  moths  made  for  lamps  or  something  of 
the  kind ;  I  thought  it  would  be  a  hint  to  him 
that  I  was  sick  of  his  flashlights  and  his 
half-baked  theories.  So  it  was — he  looked 
sulky  and  held  his  tongue. 

"But  a  few  minutes  later  I  was  called  out 
by  a  man  who  had  found  his  little  boy  dead 
in  a  field  near  his  cottage  about  an  hour  be- 
fore. The  child  was  so  still,  they  said,  that 
a  great  moth  had  settled  on  his  forehead  and 
only  fluttered  away  when  they  lifted  up  the 
[203] 


The  Terror 

body.  It  was  absolutely  illogical ;  but  it  was 
this  odd  'coincidence'  of  the  moth  in  my 
lamp  and  the  moth  on  the  dead  boy's  fore- 
head that  first  set  me  on  the  track.  I  can't 
say  that  it  guided  me  in  any  real  sense;  it 
was  more  like  a  great  flare  of  red  paint  on  a 
wall;  it  rang  up  my  attention,  if  I  may  say 
so ;  it  was  a  sort  of  shock  like  a  bang  on  the 
big  drum.  No  doubt  Merritt  was  talking 
great  nonsense  that  evening  so  far  as  his 
particular  instance  went ;  the  flashes  of  light 
from  the  farm  had  nothing  to  do  with  the 
wreck  of  the  boat.  But  his  general  prin- 
ciple was  sound ;  when  you  hear  a  gun  go  off 
and  see  a  man  fall  it  is  idle  to  talk  of  'a 
mere  coincidence.'  I  think  a  very  interest- 
ing book  might  be  written  on  this  question: 
I  would  call  it  'A  Grammar  of  Coincidence.' 
"But  as  you  will  remember,  from  having 
read  my  notes  on  the  matter,  I  was  called 
in  about  ten  days  later  to  see  a  man  named 
Cradock,  who  had  been  found  in  a  field  near 
his  farm  quite  dead.  This  also  was  at  night. 
[204] 


The  Terror 

His  wife  found  him,  and  there  were  some 
very  queer  things  in  her  story.  She  said 
that  the  hedge  of  the  field  looked  as  if  it  were 
changed;  she  began  to  be  afraid  that  she 
had  lost  her  way  and  got  into  the  wrong 
field.  Then  she  said  the  hedge  was  lighted 
up  as  if  there  were  a  lot  of  glow-worms  in 
it,  and  when  she  peered  over  the  stile  there 
seemed  to  be  some  kind  of  glimmering  upon 
the  ground,  and  then  the  glimmering  melted 
away,  and  she  found  her  husband's  body 
near  where  this  light  had  been.  Now  this 
man  Cradock  had  been  suffocated  just  as  the 
little  boy  Roberts  had  been  suffocated,  and 
as  that  man  in  the  Midlands  who  took  a 
short  cut  one  night  had  been  suffocated. 
Then  I  remembered  that  poor  Johnnie  Rob- 
erts had  called  out  about  'something  shiny' 
over  the  stile  just  before  he  played  truant. 
Then,  on  my  part,  I  had  to  contribute  the 
very  remarkable  sight  I  witnessed  here,  as 
I  looked  down  over  the  garden;  the  appear- 
ance as  of  a  spreading  tree  where  I  knew 
[205] 


The  Terror 

there  was  no  such  tree,  and  then  the  shin- 
ing and  burning  of  lights  and  moving  colors. 
Like  the  poor  child  and  Mrs.  Cradock,  I  had 
seen  something  shiny,  just  as  some  man  in 
Stratfordshire  had  seen  a  dark  cloud  with 
points  of  fire  in  it  floating  over  the  trees. 
And  Mrs.  Cradock  thought  that  the  shape  of 
the  trees  in  the  hedge  had  changed. 

"My  mind  almost  uttered  the  word  that 
was  wanted;  but  you  see  the  difficulties. 
This  set  of  circumstances  could  not,  so  far 
as  I  could  see,  have  any  relation  with  the 
other  circumstances  of  the  Terror.  How 
could  I  connect  all  this  with  the  bombs  and 
machine-guns  of  the  Midlands,  with  the 
armed  men  who  kept  watch  about  the  muni- 
tion shops  by  day  and  night.  Then  there 
was  the  long  list  of  people  here  who  had 
fallen  over  the  cliffs  or  into  the  quarry ;  there 
were  the  cases  of  the  men  stifled  in  the  slime 
of  the  marshes;  there  was  the  affair  of  the 
family  murdered  in  front  of  their  cottage 
on  the  Highway;  there  was  the  capsized 
[206] 


The  Terror 

Mary  Ann.  I  could  not  see  any  thread  that 
could  bring  all  these  incidents  together ;  they 
seemed  to  me  to  be  hopelessly  disconnected. 
I  could  not  make  out  any  relation  between 
the  agency  that  beat  out  the  brains  of  the 
Williams's  and  the  agency  that  overturned 
the  boat.  I  don't  know,  but  I  think  it's  very 
likely  if  nothing  more  had  happened  that  I 
should  have  put  the  whole  thing  down  as 
an  unaccountable  series  of  crimes  and  acci- 
dents which  chanced  to  occur  in  Meirion  in 
the  summer  of  1915.  Well,  of  course,  that 
would  have  been  an  impossible  standpoint 
in  view  of  certain  incidents  in  Merritt's 
story.  Still,  if  one  is  confronted  by  the  in- 
soluble, one  lets  it  go  at  last.  If  the  mystery 
is  inexplicable,  one  pretends  that  there  isn't 
any  mystery.  That  is  the  justification  for 
what  is  called  free  thinking. 

"Then  came  that  extraordinary  business 

of  Treff  Loyne.     I  couldn't  put  that  on  one 

side.     I     couldn't     pretend     that     nothing 

strange  or  out  of  the  way  had  happened. 

[207] 


The  Terror 

There  was  no  getting  over  it  or  getting 
round  it.  I  had  seen  with  my  eyes  that  there 
was  a  mystery,  and  a  most  horrible  mys- 
tery. I  have  forgotten  my  logic,  but  one 
might  say  that  TrefF  Loyne  demonstrated 
the  existence  of  a  mystery  in  the  figure  of 
Death. 

"I  took  it  all  home,  as  I  have  told  you, 
and  sat  down  for  the  evening  before  it.  It 
appalled  me,  not  only  by  its  horror,  but  here 
again  by  the  discrepancy  between  its  terms. 
Old  Griffith,  so  far  as  I  could  judge,  had  been 
killed  by  the  thrust  of  "a  pike  or  perhaps  of 
a  sharpened  stake:  how  could  one  relate  this 
to  the  burning  tree  that  had  floated  over 
the  ridge  of  the  barn.  It  was  as  if  I  said 
to  you:  'here  is  a  man  drowned,  and  here 
is  a  man  burned  alive :  show  that  each  death 
was  caused  by  the  same  agency!'  And  the 
moment  that  I  left  this  particular  case  of 
Treff  Loyne,  and  tried  to  get  some  light  on 
it  from  other  instances  of  the  Terror,  I 
would  think  of  the  man  in  the  midlands  who 
[208] 


The  Terror 

heard  the  feet  of  a  thousand  men  rustling 
in  the  wood,  and  their  voices  as  if  dead  men 
sat  up  in  their  bones  and  talked.  And  then 
I  would  say  to  myself,  'and  how  about 
that  boat  overturned  in  a  calm  sea  ?'  There 
seemed  no  end  to  it,  no  hope  of  any  solution. 

"It  was,  I  believe,  a  sudden  leap  of  the 
mind  that  liberated  me  from  the  tangle.  It 
was  quite  beyond  logic.  I  went  back  to  that 
evening  when  Merritt  was  boring  me  with 
his  flashlights,  to  the  moth  in  the  candle,  and 
to  the  moth  on  the  forehead  of  poor  Johnnie 
Roberts.  There  was  no  sense  in  it;  but  I 
suddenly  determined  that  the  child  and  Jo- 
seph Cradock  the  farmer,  and  that  un- 
named Stratfordshire  man,  all  found  at 
night,  all  asphyxiated,  had  been  choked  by 
vast  swarms  of  moths.  I  don't  pretend  even 
now  that  this  is  demonstrated,  but  I'm  sure 
it's  true. 

"Now  suppose  you  encounter  a  swarm  of 
these  creatures  in  the  dark.  Suppose  the 
smaller  ones  fly  up  your  nostrils.  You  will 
[209] 


The  Terror 

gasp  for  breath  and  open  your  mouth. 
Then,  suppose  some  hundreds  of  them  fly 
into  your  mouth,  into  your  gullet,  into  your 
windpipe,  what  will  happen  to  you?  You 
will  be  dead  in  a  very  short  time,  choked, 
asphyxiated." 

"But  the  moths  would  be  dead  too. 
They  would  be  found  in  the  bodies." 

"The  moths?  Do  you  know  that  it  is 
extremely  difficult  to  kill  a  moth  with  cyanide 
of  potassium?  Take  a  frog,  kill  it,  open  its 
stomach.  There  you  will  find  its  dinner  of 
moths  and  small  beetles,  and  the  'dinner'  will 
shake  itself  and  walk  off  cheerily,  to  resume 
an  entirely  active  existence.  No;  that  is  no 
difficulty. 

"Well,  now  I  came  to  this.  I  was  shut- 
ting out  all  the  other  cases.  I  was  confin- 
ing myself  to  those  that  came  under  the 
one  formula.  I  got  to  the  assumption  or 
conclusion,  whichever  you  like,  that  certain 
people  had  been  asphyxiated  by  the  action 
of  moths.  I  had  accounted  for  that  extraor- 

[210] 


The  Terror 

dinary  appearance  of  burning  or  colored 
lights  that  I  had  witnessed  myself,  when  I 
saw  the  growth  of  that  strange  tree  in  my 
garden.  That  was  clearly  the  cloud  with 
points  of  fire  in  it  that  the  Stratfordshire 
man  took  for  a  new  and  terrible  kind  of 
poison  gas,  that  was  the  shiny  something 
that  poor  little  Johnnie  Roberts  had  seen 
over  the  stile,  that  was  the  glimmering  light 
that  had  led  Mrs.  Cradock  to  her  husband's 
dead  body,  that  was  the  assemblage  of  terri- 
ble eyes  that  had  watched  over  Treff  Loyne 
by  night.  Once  on  the  right  track  I  under- 
stood all  this,  for  coming  into  this  room  in 
the  dark,  I  have  been  amazed  by  the  wonder- 
ful burning  and  the  strange  fiery  colors  of 
the  eyes  of  a  single  moth,  as  it  crept  up  the 
pane  of  glass,  outside.  Imagine  the  effect  of 
myriads  of  such  eyes,  of  the  movement  of 
these  lights  and  fires  in  a  vast  swarm  of 
moths,  each  insect  being  in  constant  motion 
while  it  kept  its  place  in  the  mass :  I  felt  that 
all  this  was  clear  and  certain. 

[211] 


The  Terror 

"Then  the  next  step.  Of  course,  we  know 
nothing  really  about  moths ;  rather,  we  know 
nothing  of  moth  reality.  For  all  I  know 
there  may  be  hundreds  of  books  which  treat 
of  moth  and  nothing  but  moth.  But  these 
are  scientific  books,  and  science  only  deals 
with  surfaces;  it  has  nothing  to  do  with 
realities — it  is  impertinent  if  it  attempts  to 
do  with  realities.  To  take  a  very  minor 
matter;  we  don't  even  know  why  the  moth 
desires  the  flame.  But  we  do  know  what 
the  moth  does  not  do ;  it  does  not  gather  itself 
into  swarms  with  the  object  of  destroying 
human  life.  But  here,  by  the  hypothesis, 
were  cases  in  which  the  moth  had  done  this 
very  thing;  the  moth  race  had  entered,  it 
seemed,  into  a  malignant  conspiracy  against 
the  human  race.  It  was  quite  impossible,  no 
doubt — that  is  to  say,  it  had  never  happened 
before — but  I  could  see  no  escape  from  this 
conclusion. 

"These  insects,  then,  were  definitely  hos- 
tile to  man;  and  then  I  stopped,  for  I  could 

[212] 


The  Terror 

not  see  the  next  step,  obvious  though  it  seems 
to  me  now.  I  believe  that  the  soldiers'  scraps 
of  talk  on  the  way  to  Treff  Loyne  and  back 
flung  the  next  plank  over  the  gulf.  They 
had  spoken  of  'rat  poison,'  of  no  rat  being 
able  to  spike  a  man  through  the  heart;  and 
then,  suddenly,  I  saw  my  way  clear.  If  the 
moths  were  infected  with  hatred  of  men,  and 
possessed  the  design  and  the  power  of  com- 
bining against  him;  why  not  suppose  this 
hatred,  this  design,  this  power  shared  by 
other  non-human  creatures. 

"The  secret  of  the  Terror  might  be  con- 
densed into  a  sentence:  the  animals  had  re- 
volted against  men. 

"Now,  the  puzzle  became  easy  enough; 
one  had  only  to  classify.  Take  the  cases 
of  the  people  who  met  their  deaths  by  falling 
over  cliffs  or  over  the  edge  of  quarries.  We 
think  of  sheep  as  timid  creatures,  who  al- 
ways ran  away.  But  suppose  sheep  that 
don't  run  away ;  and,  after  all,  in  reason  why 
should  they  run  away?  Quarry  or  no 
[213] 


The  Terror 

quarry,  cliff  or  no  cliff;  what  would  happen 
to  you  if  a  hundred  sheep  ran  after  you  in- 
stead of  running  from  you?  There  would 
be  no  help  for  it ;  they  would  have  you  down 
and  beat  you  to  death  or  stifle  you.  Then 
suppose  man,  woman,  or  child  near  a  cliff's 
edge  or  a  quarry-side,  and  a  sudden  rush  of 
sheep.  Clearly  there  is  no  help;  there  is 
nothing  for  it  but  to  go  over.  There  can  be 
no  doubt  that  that  is  what  happened  in  all 
these  cases. 

"And  again;  you  know  the  country  and 
you  know  how  a  herd  of  cattle  will  some- 
times pursue  people  through  the  fields  in  a 
solemn,  stolid  sort  of  way.  They  behave 
as  if  they  wanted  to  close  in  on  you.  Towns- 
people sometimes  get  frightened  and  scream 
and  run ;  you  or  I  would  take  no  notice,  or  at 
the  utmost,  wave  our  sticks  at  the  herd, 
which  will  stop  dead  or  lumber  off.  But 
suppose  they  don't  lumber  off.  The  mildest 
old  cow,  remember,  is  stronger  than  any 
man.  What  can  one  man  or  half  a  dozen 


The  Terror 

men  do  against  half  a  hundred  of  these 
beasts  no  longer  restrained  by  that  mysteri- 
ous inhibition,  which  has  made  for  ages  the 
strong  the  humble  slaves  of  the  weak  ?  But 
if  you  are  botanizing  in  the  marsh,  like  that 
poor  fellow  who  was  staying  at  Forth,  and 
forty  or  fifty  young  cattle  gradually  close 
round  you,  and  refuse  to  move  when  you 
shout  and  wave  your  stick,  but  get  closer 
and  closer  instead,  and  get  you  into  the  slime. 
Again,  where  is  your  help?  If  you  haven't 
got  an  automatic  pistol,  you  must  go  down 
and  stay  down,  while  the  beasts  lie  quietly 
on  you  for  five  minutes.  It  was  a  quicker 
death  for  poor  Griffith  of  Treff  Loyne — one 
of  his  own  beasts  gored  him  to  death  with 
one  sharp  thrust  of  its  horn  into  his  heart. 
And  from  that  morning  those  within  the 
house  were  closely  besieged  by  their  own  cat- 
tle and  horses  and  sheep;  and  when  those 
unhappy  people  within  opened  a  window  to 
call  for  help  or  to  catch  a  few  drops  of  rain 
water  to  relieve  their  burning  thirst,  the 
[215] 


The  Terror 

cloud  waited  for  them  with  its  myriad  eyes 
of  fire.  Can  you  wonder  that  Secretan's 
statement  reads  in  places  like  mania?  You 
perceive  the  horrible  position  of  those  people 
in  Treff  Loyne;  not  only  did  they  see  death 
advancing  on  them,  but  advancing  with  in- 
credible steps,  as  if  one  were  to  die  not  only 
in  nightmare  but  by  nightmare.  But  no  one 
in  his  wildest,  most  fiery  dreams  had  ever 
imagined  such  a  fate.  I  am  not  astonished 
that  Secretan  at  one  moment  suspected  the 
evidence  of  his  own  senses,  at  another  sur- 
mised that  the  world's  end  had  come." 

"And  how  about  the  Williams's  who  were 
murdered  on  the  Highway  near  here?" 

"The  horses  were  the  murderers;  the 
horses  that  afterwards  stampeded  the  camp 
below.  By  some  means  which  is  still  ob- 
scure to  me  they  lured  that  family  into  the 
road  and  beat  their  brains  out;  their  shod 
hoofs  were  the  instruments  of  execution. 
And,  as  for  the  Mary  Ann,  the  boat  that  was 
capsized,  I  have  no  doubt  that  it  was  over- 
[216] 


The  Terror 

turned  by  a  sudden  rush  of  the  porpoises  that 
were  gamboling  about  in  the  water  of  Lar- 
nac  Bay.  A  porpoise  is  a  heavy  beast — 
half  a  dozen  of  them  could  easily  upset  a 
light  rowing-boat.  The  munition  works? 
Their  enemy  was  rats.  I  believe  that  it  has 
been  calculated  that  in  'greater  London'  the 
number  of  rats  is  about  equal  to  the  number 
of  human  beings,  that  is,  there  are  about 
seven  millions  of  them.  The  proportion 
would  be  about  the  same  in  all  the  great  cen- 
ters of  population;  and  the  rat,  moreover, 
is,  on  occasion,  migratory  in  its  habits.  You 
can  understand  now  that  story  of  the  Semi- 
ramis,  beating  about  the  mouth  of  the 
Thames,  and  at  last  cast  away  by  Arcachon, 
her  only  crew  dry  heaps  of  bones.  The  rat 
is  an  expert  boarder  of  ships.  And  so  one 
can  understand  the  tale  told  by  the  fright- 
ened man  who  took  the  path  by  the  wood 
that  led  up  from  the  new  munition  works. 
He  thought  he  heard  a  thousand  men  tread- 
ing softly  through  the  wood  and  chattering 
[217] 


The  Terror 

to  one  another  in  some  horrible  tongue ;  what 
he  did  hear  was  the  marshaling  of  an  army 
of  rats — their  array  before  the  battle. 

"And  conceive  the  terror  of  such  an  at- 
tack. Even  one  rat  in  a  fury  is  said  to  be 
an  ugly  customer  to  meet ;  conceive  then,  the 
irruption  of  these  terrible,  swarming  myri- 
ads, rushing  upon  the  helpless,  unprepared, 
astonished  workers  in  the  munition  shops." 

There  can  be  no  doubt,  I  think,  that  Dr. 
Lewis  was  entirely  justified  in  these  extraor- 
dinary conclusions.  As  I  say,  I  had  arrived 
at  pretty  much  the  same  end,  by  different 
ways ;  but  this  rather  as  to  the  general  situa- 
tion, while  Lewis  had  made  his  own  particu- 
lar study  of  those  circumstances  of  the 
Terror  that  were  within  his  immediate  pur- 
view, as  a  physician  in  large  practice  in  the 
southern  part  of  Meirion.  Of  some  of  the 
cases  which  he  reviewed  he  had,  no  doubt, 
no  immediate  or  first-hand  knowledge;  but 
he  judged  these  instances  by  their  similarity 
[218] 


The  Terror 

to  the  facts  which  had  come  under  his  per- 
sonal notice.  He  spoke  of  the  affairs  of  the 
quarry  at  Llanfihangel  on  the  analogy  of  the 
people  who  were  found  dead  at  the  bottom 
of  the  cliffs  near  Forth,  and  he  was  no  doubt 
justified  in  doing  so.  He  told  me  that,  think- 
ing the  whole  matter  over,  he  was  hardly 
more  astonished  by  the  Terror  in  itself  than 
by  the  strange  way  in  which  he  had  arrived 
at  his  conclusions. 

"You  know,"  he  said,  "those  certain  evi- 
dences of  animal  malevolence  which  we  knew 
of,  the  bees  that  stung  the  child  to  death,  the 
trusted  sheepdog's  turning  savage,  and  so 
forth.  Well,  I  got  no  light  whatever  from 
all  this ;  it  suggested  nothing  to  me — simply 
because  I  had  not  got  that  'idea'  which 
Coleridge  rightly  holds  necessary  in  all  in- 
quiry ;  facts  qua  facts,  as  we  said,  mean  noth- 
ing and,  come  to  nothing.  You  do  not  be- 
lieve, therefore  you  cannot  see. 

"And  then,  when  the  truth  at  last  ap- 
peared it  was  through  the  whimsical  'coin- 
[219] 


The  Terror 

cidence/  as  we  call  such  signs,  of  the  moth 
in  my  lamp  and  the  moth  on  the  dead  child's 
forehead.  This,  I  think,  is  very  extraor- 
dinary." 

"And  there  seems  to  have  been  one  beast 
that  remained  faithful;  the  dog  at  TrefF 
Loyne.  That  is  strange." 

"That  remains  a  mystery." 

It  would  not  be  wise,  even  now,  to  describe 
too  closely  the  terrible  scenes  that  were  to 
be  seen  in  the  munition  areas  of  the  north 
and  the  midlands  during  the  black  months 
of  the  Terror.  Out  of  the  factories  issued 
at  black  midnight  the  shrouded  dead  in  their 
coffins,  and  their  very  kinsfolk  did  not  know 
how  they  had  come  by  their  deaths.  All  the 
towns  were  full  of  houses  of  mourning,  were 
full  of  dark  and  terrible  rumors ;  incredible, 
as  the  incredible  reality.  There  were  things 
done  and  suffered  that  perhaps  never  will  be 
brought  to  light,  memories  and  secret  tradi- 
tions of  these  things  will  be  whispered  in 
[220] 


The  Terror 

families,  delivered  from  father  to  son,  grow- 
ing wilder  with  the  passage  of  the  years,  but 
never  growing  wilder  than  the  truth. 

It  is  enough  to  say  that  the  cause  of  the 
Allies  was  for  awhile  in  deadly  peril.  The 
men  at  the  front  called  in  their  extremity 
for  guns  and  shells.  No  one  told  them  what 
was  happening  in  the  places  where  these 
munitions  were  made. 

At  first  the  position  was  nothing  less  than 
desperate;  men  in  high  places  were  almost 
ready  to  cry  "mercy"  to  the  enemy.  But, 
after  the  first  panic,  measures  were  taken 
such  as  those  described  by  Merritt  in  his  ac- 
count of  the  matter.  The  workers  were 
armed  with  special  weapons,  guards  were 
mounted,  machine-guns  were  placed  in  po- 
sition, bombs  and  liquid  flame  were  ready 
against  the  obscene  hordes  of  the  enemy, 
and  the  "burning  clouds"  found  a  fire  fiercer 
than  their  own.  Many  deaths  occurred 
amongst  the  airmen;  but  they,  too,  were 
given  special  guns,  arms  that  scattered  shot 

[221] 


The  Terror 

broadcast,  and  so  drove  away  the  dark  flights 
that  threatened  the  airplanes. 

And,  then,  in  the  winter  of  1915-16,  the 
Terror  ended  suddenly  as  it  had  begun. 
Once  more  a  sheep  was  a  frightened  beast 
that  ran  instinctively  from  a  little  child;  the 
cattle  were  again  solemn,  stupid  creatures, 
void  of  harm;  the  spirit  and  the  convention 
of  malignant  design  passed  out  of  the  hearts 
of  all  the  animals.  The  chains  that  they 
had  cast  off  for  awhile  were  thrown  again 
about  them. 

And,  finally,  there  comes  the  inevitable 
"why?"  Why  did  the  beasts  who  had  been 
humbly  and  patiently  subject  to  man,  or  af- 
frighted by  his  presence,  suddenly  know 
their  strength  and  learn  how  to  league  to- 
gether, and  declare  bitter  war  against  their 
ancient  master  ? 

It  is  a  most  difficult  and  obscure  question. 
I  give  what  explanation  I  have  to  give  with 
very  great  diffidence,  and  an  eminent  dis- 
[222] 


The  Terror 

position  to  be  corrected,  if  a  clearer  light  can 
be  found. 

Some  friends  of  mine,  for  whose  judg- 
ment I  have  very  great  respect,  are  inclined 
to  think  that  there  was  a  certain  contagion 
of  hate.  They  hold  that  the  fury  of  the 
whole  world  at  war,  the  great  passion  of 
death  that  seems  driving  all  humanity  to  de- 
struction, infected  at  last  these  lower  crea- 
tures, and  in  place  of  their  native  instinct 
of  submission,  gave  them  rage  and  wrath 
and  ravening. 

This  may  be  the  explanation.  I  cannot 
say  that  it  is  not  so,  because  I  do  not  pro- 
fess to  understand  the  working  of  the  uni- 
verse. But  I  confess  that  the  theory  strikes 
me  as  fanciful.  There  may  be  a  contagion 
of  hate  as  there  is  a  contagion  of  small- 
pox; I  do  not  know,  but  I  hardly  believe 
it. 

In  my  opinion,  and  it  is  only  an  opinion, 
the  source  of  the  great  revolt  of  the  beasts 
[223] 


The  Terror 

is  to  be  sought  in  a  much  subtler  region  of 
inquiry.  I  believe  that  the  subjects  revolted 
because  the  king  abdicated.  Man  has 
dominated  the  beasts  throughout  the  ages, 
the  spiritual  has  reigned  over  the  rational 
through  the  peculiar  quality  and  grace  of 
spirituality  that  men  possess,  that  makes  a 
man  to  be  that  which  he  is.  And  when  he 
maintained  this  power  and  grace,  I  think  it 
is  pretty  clear  that  between  him  and  the  ani- 
mals there  was  a  certain  treaty  and  alliance. 
There  was  supremacy  on  the  one  hand,  and 
submission  on  the  other;  but  at  the  same 
time  there  was  between  the  two  that  cordial- 
ity which  exists  between  lords  and  subjects 
in  a  well-organized  state.  I  know  a  social- 
ist who  maintains  that  Chaucer's  "Canter- 
bury Tales"  give  a  picture  of  true  democ- 
racy. I  do  not  know  about  that,  but  I  see 
that  knight  and  miller  were  able  to  get  on 
quite  pleasantly  together,  just  because  the 
knight  knew  that  he  was  a  knight  and  the 
miller  knew  that  he  was  a  miller.  If  the 
[224] 


The  Terror 

knight  had  had  conscientious  objections  to 
his  knightly  grade,  while  the  miller  saw  no 
reason  why  he  should  not  be  a  knight,  I  am 
sure  that  their  intercourse  would  have  been 
difficult,  unpleasant,  and  perhaps  murder- 
ous. 

So  with  man.  I  believe  in  the  strength 
and  truth  of  tradition.  A  learned  man  said 
to  me  a  few  weeks  ago:  "When  I  have  to 
choose  between  the  evidence  of  tradition  and 
the  evidence  of  a  document,  I  always  be- 
lieve the  evidence  of  tradition.  Documents 
may  be  falsified,  and  often  are  falsified ;  tra- 
dition is  never  falsified."  This  is  true ;  and, 
therefore,  I  think,  one  may  put  trust  in  the 
vast  body  of  folklore  which  asserts  that  there 
was  once  a  worthy  and  friendly  alliance  be- 
tween man  and  the  beasts.  Our  popular 
tale  of  Dick  Whittington  and  his  Cat  no 
doubt  represents  the  adaptation  of  a  very 
ancient  legend  to  a  comparatively  modern 
personage,  but  we  may  go  back  into  the  ages 
and  find  the  popular  tradition  asserting  that 
[225] 


The  Terror 

not  only  are  the  animals  the  subjects,  but 
also  the  friends  of  man. 

All  that  was  in  virtue  of  that  singular 
spiritual  element  in  man  which  the  rational 
animals  do  not  possess.  Spiritual  does  not 
mean  respectable,  it  does  not  even  mean 
moral,  it  does  not  mean  "good"  in  the  or- 
dinary acceptation  of  the  word.  It  signifies 
the  royal  prerogative  of  man,  differentiating 
him  from  the  beasts. 

For  long  ages  he  has  been  putting  off  this 
royal  robe,  he  has  been  wiping  the  balm  of 
consecration  from  his  own  breast.  He  has 
declared,  again  and  again,  that  he  is  not 
spiritual,  but  rational,  that  is,  the  equal  of 
the  beasts  over  whom  he  was  once  sovereign. 
He  has  vowed  that  he  is  not  Orpheus  but 
Caliban. 

But  the  beasts  also  have  within  them  some- 
thing which  corresponds  to  the  spiritual 
quality  in  men — we  are  content  to  call  it  in- 
stinct. They  perceived  that  the  throne  was 
vacant — not  even  friendship  was  possible  be- 
[226] 


The  Terror 

tween  them  and  the  self-deposed  monarch. 
If  he  were  not  king  he  was  a  sham,  an  im- 
poster,  a  thing  to  be  destroyed. 

Hence,  I  think,  the  Terror.     They  have 
risen  once — they  may  rise  again. 


THE   END 


VAIL-BALLOU  co.,  BINGHAMTON  AND  NEW  YORK 
[227] 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  UBflARY  FACILITY 


A     000137518     7 


